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The Dead Rabbit

We sat down to eat yesterday evening on a sublime summer's evening the like of which we long for on cold winter nights. My wife had invited a friend for dinner so three adults and our seven year old son sat down al fresco to enjoy a mouth-watering smoked fish chowder with freshly baked wholemeal bread. With barely a breeze around us, we ate and conversed beneath the shade of our hazel tree. These evenings make all the hard work worthwhile.

As the course drew to it's close, my mind was already wandering to the delights of Eton mess for dessert. With no strawberries to hand, we were to have stewed rhubarb instead which I'm sure would have been lovely. Would have been.

As the dinner plates were taken in to the kitchen a blood curdling squeal emanated from the garden to put paid to our evening of tranquility. I rushed out to the garden to the spectacle of one of the pet rabbits laying prostrate on the floor of the hutch at full stretch. Although I have recently qualified as a doctor, I'm no vet. That said, I know an animal on the way out when I see one. This was not a well rabbit. I quickly phoned the local vet who said they could send someone to the surgery if I needed. There was to be no such need. I returned to the garden to see that the last vestiges of life had left the rabbit. I have never yet had to confirm a death in a human so this was my opportunity for a bit of practice. I could feel no pulse and my stethoscope revealed no heart sounds. Pupillary reflexes were absent and my patient was getting colder and stiffer by the second. There could be no reasonable doubt. This was an ex-rabbit to paraphrase the Monty Python "Dead parrot sketch".

You may not imagine the ensuing outpouring of grief from my son. This was going to be a long night - and so it proved. Inconsolable, he couldn't think of going to bed until he had drawn up invitations for the funeral. Under normal circumstances, writing on paper of his own volition isn't exactly his thing. That night was no ordinary night though. Phone calls were made and my mother agreed to provide a burial plot.

Tonight, we all assembled at the said burial plot with poor old Thumper in his banana box laying motionless on a bed straw with a blanket of hay for comfort. We all had to say a few words struggling to hold it together as the farce clouds assembled ominously in the forefront of our minds. In my brief eulogy to the deceased pet, I recalled with affection the way Thumper used to gaze longingly at the runner bean plants which must honestly have been the torment of the poor creature. My son paid his own solemn tribute, my wife said a few words of remembrance and then to take the theatre to a new level, my mother insisted we all say the Lord's Prayer. And we did.

So tonight, poor Thumper lies in a shallow grave in the comfort of his banana box coffin under the comforting shade of a Rubinia tree safe in the knowledge that the grave stone on top of him will hopefully preclude any neighbouring cats from attempting the unthinkable.

Let's now hope the remaining rabbit can hold on for a few years yet because I don't think any of us want another day like that for a long while.

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