The boy and the bunny

By Jenna Loo
There was once a little boy whose father owned a small farm. Although it was so very small, the boy thought the farm to be the best place in the whole wide world. He made friends with the grumpy grey donkeys as they poked their noses at him through the wooden bars of their stable, and fed the horses carrots as they were saddled up for riding lessons. Though he played frequently in the stables, his absolute favourite corner of the farm was the bunny enclosure, which was run as an attraction for visiting tourists.

The bunny enclosure had a hundred bunnies of all shapes and sizes. They could afford to rear the bunnies as the daily stream of visitors would buy the feed from the farm to feed the bunnies by hand. The boy didn't have to pay, of course. He loved watching the bunnies hop about their daily affairs. He loved bunnies so much that his father decided to give him a baby bunny for his very own.

The boy was delighted. He carefully fed the bunny milk with a baby bottle until it was weaned off milk, then prepared a special mix of carrots, oats and seeds for its daily meal. He brushed its fur each day, and wiped its paws whenever it had been hopping around in the dirt. It was the best-loved bunny on the farm.

Two years passed during which the farmer's family experienced hardship after hardship. Many of the livestock died of disease, and the stream of visitors grew less and less as times were hard. The straw that broke the camel's back was when the boy's mother fell gravely ill. The doctor came to the farm almost every afternoon, and left every evening shaking his head. Bills and medicines raced each other in piling up, and out of necessity the farmer began selling the donkeys, then the horses, then the cows. Eventually, all that was left was the bunny enclosure.

With a sad heart, the farmer called his little boy to him and told him to say goodbye to all the bunnies, save one. With the exception of the boy's own special bunny, the other bunnies were to be sold off to a local diner which had rabbit stew as a lunch special.

Tearfully, the little boy stroked each of the bunnies behind the ears, and said his goodbyes. Then he hugged his own special bunny close to his heart, and whispered, "Don't be afraid, you're safe with me."