A new type of superhero

Lisa Berkin, the woman who owns the cottage where I reside, found a deserted baby bunny in the parking lot of a local park the other day.
Unable to leave the little thing there, she swooped it up and brought it home.


It turns out that the bunny is a domestic little baby and in need of a home, soooo now it lives here with the two dogs, 4 frogs, 2 fish, and many hummingbirds.
I think that one of things I love about Lisa is that she is as much a sucker for animals as I am.

Shira, Lisa's daughter, has named the bunny "Mitten" because it has one little paw that is all white and truly resembles that of a mittened foot. The Berkin's pug Lucy is mildly obsessed with the new addition to their family.
She is constantly rattling the bunny's cage trying to free Mitten from captivity in order to engage in a playdate/mawling.


The funny thing about the bunny is that it appears to be fearless. For those of you who have held a rabbit, you can attest to the fact that they are very anxious little creatures. The number one killer of all members of the hare family is heartattacks.
If you hold them too far away from the security of your body, or bring them near water or another animal, they immediately experience heart palpitations.

Well this little girl is the definition of brave.
When the dog damn near tries to kill her, the Mitten just sits there and stares Lucy down. When rogue pest management professionals tried to brake into Lisa's house the other night, Mitten defended the family and the entire block, singlehandedly.
No one actually saw it happen, but the police did report that the robbers were mysteriously bound and gagged, and found unconscious in the garage and the only clue as to who had intervened was a small marigold leaf and a piece of half eaten carrot.


Now consider a moment that the bunny is size of a baseball, has no means of self-defense and a brain the size of pea and when we let her loose in the garden, she skips and hops around in little spurts almost as if she has somewhere to go, something to do, some sort of bunny business that we humans couldn't even comprehend.


This why Jeremiah, Shira, and I have renamed the rabbit "Tough-y." Mitten now longer seems an appropriate name for the hopper come "crime-stopper."
We have even coined phrases like, "What do you think Toughy would do about that.?." or "Toughy would be ashamed of how fearful you acting right now," all of which must be said in a bad British accent.
When I babysat Shira the other night, Jed and I entertained Shira by making copious amounts of jokes referring to Toughy's intimidating and indestructible manner.
We also took Shira to the fireworks where she received a mile long shoulder ride back to car amidst the hundreds of people, courtesy of Jet-man. The two of them also wrote a song together on the electric guitar and the hammer dulcimer.

The song was called "Mitten" but now we will be re-recordind and releasing a heavier, rockier, gutter punk version of the tune, now entitled "Beware the Hare".
She's freakin' crazy.