On Living and Writing With Two Rabbits
The story that inspired this post is brought to you by Jenny Heishman and Andre ten Dam, my new friends who are currently afield in the Netherlands!
I still can’t believe my luck: on the heels of the social storm that was VORTEXT, I’d been thinking how perfect it would be if I could get just three weeks to disappear from the world and produce some new writing. (I am an avid editor and polisher, but first drafts are like blood from a stone every time). “If I could have just three weeks,” I said to Phil. Not three days after that, I received an email from artist Jenny Heishman on Bainbridge, asking whether I would be available to do a house-sit for three weeks while she and her partner Andre visited his family in the Netherlands. No more; no less. Furthermore, would I be willing to take on the cuddly task of caring for their two Rhineland bunny rabbits, Jacco (M) and Koos (F) (pictured below in all their long-eared lettuce-munching glory)?
Yes, yes, and yes!
Jacco (left) and Koos (right)
I’ve been here three days, and Jenny and Andre’s cottage is love itself. Nestled in seaside woods on the southeast shore of Bainbridge Island, the place has turned out to be the perfect spot to wander, brood and bang out those constipated first drafts. Even more so, truly, for what the rabbit people have taught me so far about how to be a good writer (the appellation seems to suit, given how very much they act like people, a trait that’ll hopefully become evident in their lessons to me, listed thus):
- They’re sensitive and alert to EVERYTHING. If I so much as sneeze, they will startle astir and look at me funny. It’s hard while sequestering myself indoors to be paying much attention to sights, sounds, smells. They seem superb at it, to the point of neurotic (and what writer couldn’t use a nip of neurosis to keep things interesting?)
- They draw awesome boundaries. Koos does this especially, in a gesture that resembles humping and which I later learned is a bid for dominance. And it turns out that she needs it if she’s going to get her fair share of anything at all. Jacco has the appetite of a garbage disposal, and will outright steal her food. I messaged Phil on the first night about this, to which his reply was, in lieu of the recent online brouhaha about behavioral differences between male and female writers when it comes to submitting to literary magazines: “Jacco fires his pieces off for publication willy nilly, while Koos sits on her work for too long. Aaaahhh testosterone.” (Hey, I didn’t say it).
- They’re trouble in all the right ways, finding the quickest and most efficient route to every destination (which is usually in the way of where I need to go. Oyvay, it seems that’s how the world tends to work, chaotically enough – you sometimes just have to bug people and claim needed space to get real work done).
- They play. They thump. They jump. They chew on everything from apple and poplar wood to the corners of my books of poetry (a reminder to do more than just read them). And they listen very carefully when I read the poems of Hopkins out loud. They like Shakespeare’s sonnets too, but not as much as Hopkins (must be that the highfalutin language is too much for them, true to the Beatrix Potter country bumpkin typology). I may have just established my nightly ritual while I'm here.
That’s it for now. My poems keep getting weirder and weirder – a sign the Muse is present? What am I saying, I've got two of them right here, and before they finish their kibble and start chewing on my sandals I’d better sign off…