Rabbits in the rain

I’m sitting in the living room, watching the rabbits nibble their food in the garden drizzle, getting their fur damp and twitching their noses at me. The rabbits are super soft and strokable and they get very excited when I bring the fresh hay. One of them is sitting in the rain, resting its paws on a log, staring through the fence at me intensely, as if to say “Is this meant to be fun?”. 

The other thing that is raining down upon us, apart from water, is Winter viruses. They attack every week, from above, the side and below. Last week we got the dreaded stomach bug, which raged through each of us like a forest fire. The only one to puzzlingly escape the sickness was Otter. He liked to impersonate the others though. Helpfully dry heaving into the toilet and making dramatic retching noises, like this was a fun new thing he’d learned. 

The snotty noses, the coughs, the stomach aches, the head aches and occasional fever continue to crop up in Mole, Hedgehog, Beaver and Otter like a merry-go-round. All the multi-vitamins and first-defence spray in the world won’t stop it. We wonder when we’ll ever be free of it. 

It’s that mid-winter time of year that makes me want to sleep a lot. Otter is taking his usual noon day nap. It has been two hours and counting. Anyway it’s very peaceful. The Christmas decorations are now back in the loft, but I’ve kept the party bunting up from Beaver’s recent birthday, mainly to keep a bit of festive cheer going through January. We’ve used up the mulled wine and the baileys, but the gin should keep us going until the spring. 

The days now consist of us doing a lot but at the same time not very much. It seems enough to get everyone to school and back, taxi them to their various clubs and keep everyone fed and happy. The house is showing the wear and tear of ten years with four children in it, and the constant work of cleaning up after shedded skin, hair and general mess continues. This was not helped when the vacuum had to be replaced last week after Fox poured water from the dog bowl into it and buggered the electrics. 

Mole and Hedgehog are becoming jaded ‘tweens’, while Beaver and Otter are still in the angelic ‘toddler’ stage. Mole and Hedgehog are to be found singing into their hairbrushes or stopping at KFC on their latest Primark shopping trip, while Beaver and Otter are to be found making a den together out of cushions or getting muddy in the woods. The emotional needs are different but the sleep deprivation is the same. 

The rabbits provide a welcome distraction for everyone. They also pooh an incredible amount. Sunday is hutch cleaning day. Mole and Hedgehog are meant to do this job, but so far it is just me. They are much more keen on grooming duty, which is more cute and cuddly. The rabbits seem to enjoy the grooming and lay sprawled out on laps with a look of ecstasy on their furry faces. Beaver pays the rabbits some fleeting attention whenever she runs past, while Otter’s favourite job is feeding them with kitchen scraps. He toddles off with the bowl and tips it un-ceromoniously over the fence onto their heads. 

Every now and then the rabbits escape from their run. I’m always impressed by how they’ve managed to do it. They are impossible to catch but at some point they will go behind the shed, so can be caught between two fishing nets in a pincer grip, and dropped home. The dog continues to pad around their run and stare at them with the intensity of a predator, forever tantalised and frustrated by them. I had dreams of the rabbits roaming free in the garden, but that’s not going to happen while the dog is around. 

And so we continue to plod towards the Spring. It’s a weird time of year, but Mole, Hedgehog, Beaver and Otter are very content inside the four walls. There is no end to the number of films they will watch on repeat, the number of hot chocolates they will make, the amount of shopping they will do on Shein, and the amount of peanut butter they will eat. 

Meanwhile I gravitate to my futon and enjoy another coffee with my book, usually with Otter attached to the boob. Suits me just fine. 

Beaver's drawing of the rabbits