I never knew that ten pounds could change my life; ten pounds that were the sum total of two small rabbits. One spunky, highly opinionated, and fearless. The other, slightly grumpy, food-motivated and adorably clumsy. All it took was two small rabbits to make me unreasonably happy, scared to death and devastated by a grief that I didn’t know was possible. They were ten pounds of love that I will carry for the rest of my life. They were my rabbits, Snicket and Boo.
Snicket and Boo came into my world shortly after a number of hugely stressful personal transitions. I got married to a soldier. I quit my job, moved five thousand miles from my home and family, and left behind everything I knew. I settled into a life that I never expected, a foreign military culture that was very isolating. Shortly after, I got sick and went through a long illness and major surgery.
Snicket came to me on my twenty-third birthday—my first birthday in this strange new reality. I didn’t know anyone when I first moved on base, and Snicket was my constant companion. She was a little grey-black rabbit with short, silky fur, a white belly, and a fawn-colored patch behind her ears. There was a white diamond blaze on her forehead, and sweet dark lashes around her ever-watchful eyes. She looked very much like a wild bunny. She was insatiably curious, and from the first moment she came home at nine weeks old, she asserted her dominance. She marked everything a hundred times over; she was a rabbit who had no idea she was supposed to be a timid prey animal, but was instead wickedly smart and often mischievous.
Snicket chewed baseboards, proudly tore up carpet fibers and left them in a pile for us, and would nibble things just to get our attention. Anything wooden that had a right angle was quickly reduced to a rounded edge. It didn’t matter how many toys we gave her or how we tried to bunny-proof. She got around everything and was deterred by nothing; we often joked she was like the velociraptor in Jurassic Park who continually tested the fences for weakness. Whenever she did something she knew we wouldn’t like, she would do a binky and proudly prance away. Three phone cords and four dust busters fell prey to her tiny, sharp teeth. She even removed her own sutures after her spay. Everything was done on her terms, in her time, and we loved her.
Boo came home two months later to be a companion to Snicket, although Snicket was less than pleased about it at first. She mercilessly chased the little black-and-white bunny with whiskers like crinkle fries, ears that looked far too big for her body, and fur as soft as velvet. Poor Boo spent the first month of her life running and hiding as I worked through the long process of bonding two female rabbits, but eventually they became reluctant friends.
Snicket remained the H.B.I.C. (Head Bunny In Charge)—or, as we called her in military terms, “Household Six”—even after Boo grew into her ears and outweighed her. They were sometimes at odds, but more often worked as a team to outsmart their humans. Snicket was the brains and Boo the muscle. There was nothing they couldn’t open or jump over. When Boo tasted her first banana, she was so enamored with it that she mustered all of her strength and did a straight vertical jump up—and into—the trash can to go after the peel.
As they grew, they developed wonderful and distinct personalities, and so earned a variety of nicknames. Boo became “Goose,” because she often honked at us like a goose when she was annoyed. Snicket was “Snicket P. Christmas,” but was often just called “P.” Together these two did thousands of dollars of damage to the baseboards, carpets, and doorframes, resulting in some very awkward conversations with the Army Housing Office.
Two years later, when we moved back to the East Coast, they flew in-cabin with us for twelve hours. It was the most stressful twelve hours I have ever spent on a plane. Boo, who was generally more relaxed about everything, did well. Snicket, high-strung as ever, did not appreciate being confined in a carrier under a seat, and ended up with ileus within a day of landing. That was the first time either of them had been ill, and it was the first time I became aware of just how deeply they had engrained themselves in my heart.
Boo was a quiet, observant rabbit. She would calculate the risk versus reward of any situation, and generally deferred to Snicket. Sometimes, however, in her braver moments, she would try to assert dominance over Snicket…but would then realize what she had done and take off running like a bat out of hell. She was often a grumpy little Goose, but never failed to perk up at the sight of a banana. It was literally impossible to eat a banana anywhere in the house without Boo thundering down the hallway and launching herself at you to try to steal a bite. Sometimes in the morning if we overslept and were late with breakfast, Boo would run down the hall, propel herself onto the bed and land squarely on my husband’s chest, digging at his shirt to wake him up. It takes a lot to startle a soldier, but being woken up from a deep sleep by a “Goose attack” was enough to scare him half to death. But we loved her.
As the girls got older, they developed some medical problems. Boo started choking on her food. More than once I had to clear an airway obstruction. We finally discovered she had a weakened lower esophageal sphincter and food was able to make its way back up her esophagus and cause her to choke. We started her on a lifelong regiment of GI motility drugs that managed her condition. She had pneumonia once and spent a week in oxygen. I didn’t sleep at all that week.
Snicket was prone to occasional bouts of stasis, partly due, I always thought, to her intense opinions about everything and strong disapproval of a long list of items. And then she developed E. Cuniculi. One day there was a hint of a shadow in her eye that I thought might be the start of a cataract. When it progressed over the next day we went to the vet. We started treatment for E. Cuniculi, but within a week she was fully blind in both eyes, and everything changed.
Our little adventurous bunny was suddenly much more timid, bumping into things and hesitant to cross the room. But Boo, to her credit (and overlooking the years of mounting and fur-pulling by Snicket), became her sight. Boo helped Snicket relearn how to navigate her way through their mazes and tunnels, and where the litter boxes and food bowls were located. We kept everything in their room the same and eventually Snicket rediscovered her spirit and confidence. Together they found their way, and for three more years they chewed more baseboards, ate through pounds of cardboard houses and devoured countless heads of lettuce. Snicket was frailer after her E. Cuniculi, but she never gave up. She was the H.B.I.C., after all.
That changed one day when she was nearly eleven years old. She refused to eat and was in significant pain. We took her to the vet immediately and to our shock, she was diagnosed with a kidney stone too large to pass. We came home with multiple pain relievers and muscle relaxers. She could not get comfortable, refused all food, and hid. Boo stayed with her constantly, aware that something was very wrong. No matter what we did, we could not control her pain. We spent the last day holding her and stroking her tiny head. She slept on my chest for hours.
The next morning we said goodbye. She was sedated heavily and finally relaxed. For the first time in three days, I saw her little body release the pain, and her tension melted away. We kissed her, stroked her and nuzzled her as the barbiturate did its work. Boo was at her side. And then, within seconds, she was gone. Boo nudged her head and then gingerly picked up the corner of the blanket and covered her face. My heart shattered.
We had to take Snicket’s body back home to help Boo understand in her own space that Snicket was gone. Boo circled and groomed Snicket for an hour; she nudged her and hopped around her, and we said goodbye again. I held her little body against my chest and could not breathe or think. I sobbed. The pain was physical, all-consuming and worse than anything I had ever experienced. But Boo was still there, and she needed me.
For eighteen months we tried to fill the hole that Snicket had left. We attempted to bond Boo with a new friend, but ultimately she was just not interested. She was an old lady set in her ways. We spoiled her and spent as much time with her as she would allow before she would nudge us away with an annoyed honk. She still played and ate, destroyed her litter box, and got into mischief, but she was never quite the same. As contentious as their relationship could be at times, Snicket and Boo were a bonded pair, and without Snicket’s (ever bossy) guiding force, Boo was a bit lost.
A year and a half after we lost Snicket, we were forced to make the same choice for Boo. She had a spinal or neurological injury that caused periods of long-lasting, intense pain during which she could barely move. She recovered from the first episode and improved for two weeks. It was just enough time to give us hope that she was going to recover, but she didn’t. Her symptoms reoccurred and, despite a week of treatment in the hospital, her health declined. We knew we had to say goodbye when she pushed away her beloved banana and laid her head on the towel, shaking with the effort of standing up. All we could do was free her from her pain.
It was the last gift I could give her. This time it was really the end. Snicket and Boo were both gone; our lives had changed and would never be the same. It was an emptiness that hurt like an actual wound in my heart.
Losing Snicket and Boo was devastating in a way that was hard to explain. They were my best friends and my constant companions during some of the darkest times of my life. They were my joy, the reason I laughed, and my distraction from everything that was going wrong. They were my kids. I could barely process the pain of their loss or of having to make the decision to end their pain. I questioned everything, blamed myself for not being able to fix them, and for euthanizing them when maybe, just maybe, if I had done something—anything—differently, I could have saved them. These feelings were only compounded because I was a veterinary medical professional, a Licensed Veterinary Technician, a nurse, and nothing I did helped. All I could do was to fulfill the promise I made them to never let them suffer. Life is about quality, not quantity, and in the end, the only gift I could give them was a painless and dignified closing to a happy life. It was an honor to be there with them in those moments, to ease them out of their pain with my love and tears.
Through their loss, I learned a lot about grief. For me, it is not something that has gotten better with time; I’ve just learned how to better live with the pain. It’s always there, a wound open just enough to sting every time I think of them. We lost Snicket in February of 2106 and Boo in August of 2017, and it still hurts. I miss them every single day, and I will never stop missing them. But the price of that pain was over ten years of happiness, laughter, and amusement. It was over ten years of insane medical expenses and missed vacations, frustration, countless sleepless nights and ridiculous moments of trying to glue carpet fibers back into the padding, or patch destroyed woodwork.
Our house is still full of half-eaten baseboards and chewed furniture legs, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. Weighed against the pain of their loss are the happy memories and the irrefutable knowledge that my life was made incalculably better by sharing it with these two five-pound rabbits. Even though the cost of that love was terrible pain, I would pay it a thousand times over for the joy of having them share my life. The pain is part of the gift, and I embrace it with thanks and gratitude for the lives, and love, of Snicket and Boo.
Dedicated with all of my love to Snicket and Boo, and with my deepest gratitude to Dr. Jamie Torres and Dr. Cassie Carroll.
Reviewed by HRS staff
Photo Credit: Erica LaFramboise, LVTGraphic Credit: Erica LaFramboise
Journal Issue: House Rabbit Journal, Winter 2019
