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Writer's pictureLifelines for MCI

July 13, 2020: The Bunny Hutch Massacre

Updated: Jul 18, 2020

According to Webster, Lhasa Apso is a small, furry, family-friendly dog. My experience was far different than Mr. Webster's.


Homes in my South Toledo neighborhood were starter, or retirement homes, depending on your age. Most being small two story and well-maintained with flowers and gardens, the owners engaged in tacit One Up The Jones's battles. My home was a showpiece highlighted with a white picket fence surrounding the property, neato to look at, but a huge ass pain to maintain.


One Spring afternoon while enjoying a cold beer, cigar, and solitude on the new deck I was building, I heard the gleeful screams of children coming from the backyard. My children were enjoying a Saturday with Grandpa, so it wasn't them making noise and I put it out of my head. The screams continued and had a different quality, more constant and frequent than children playing. I walked off the deck and rounded the corner of the garage to investigate.


Dandelion tufts floating about, tumbling on the lawn. I knew they weren't from my yard, weeds were not allowed. I picked up a sample and discovered that it wasn't dandelion at all, but fur ... white fur tinged with red paint. The unwelcome invaders seemed to be magically floating up from my strawberry patch. The screaming continued, no children in sight.


I walked closer to the strawberry patch and heard a growl, a warning to stay away. The bushes shook as whatever this thing was rifled around like a pig digging a truffle. It poked its head up from the bushes, and I saw it. It was hideous, huge and foaming from the mouth, covered bow to stern in red strawberry juice. The dog was panting and looked possessed, did I plant some sort of hallucinogenic strawberries that was making the thing crazed? I told the dog to leave the patch, but it just kept diving into the bushes tearing into my garden. Wait! It's spring, the berries aren't ripe yet ... what the what?


Looking closer, I saw the carnage ... parts of animal, what type of animal unknown, strewn all over my trampled and ruined strawberry patch. I looked up and saw our rabbit hutch door wide open and void of any life. Empty. The huge little beast had busted into the hutch and gorged himself on my children's pets, apparently dragging them into the strawberries to escape detection. As my anger grew, I realized the dog was covered in rabbit fluids, blood, bile and urine, not the juice of green strawberries at all. Then it hit me, the dog was my neighbors. Brian. Brian! FUCKING BRIAN, GET OUT HERE! His little pathetic, ankle biting, bitchy, barking machine Lhasa Apso cowering in the corner of the yard.


Brian is a slow talker and mover, two things I didn't need at that moment, and I kept yelling until he lumbered out of his house.


With all the composure I could muster ... "Brian, your dog ate our rabbits, come get it off my property."


"Why was it in your yard, and how do you know it was her?"


Breathe, Dan, breathe. "Brian, come get your dog or I'll drown it."


He sees the dog and its new paint job and then asked me to hand it to him! Sometimes less is more. I didn't say a word but rather deployed my inner Hank Voight, staring right through his Cousin Eddie expression with my 1000-yard eye missiles. He calls Angel (the dog's name), it sheepishly walks to him, and he picks it up like a live grenade.


Shortly thereafter as I'm cleaning the crime scene, pulling dismantled parts of bunnies out of my garden, throwing feet, legs, guts and ears into a bushel basket, I can hear Brian yelling at his dog puking nonstop as he tries to scrub the evidence out of Angel's fur. Raking rabbit guts is gross, but at least I'm not scrubbing them.


After the initial shock of telling my boys what happened, and them glaring at Brian, making fun of his now pink dog, we decide to retire from the rabbit business and give the hutch away.


Remember that deck I was building? Brian had asked me not to put up privacy panels. Yeah, he's that guy, because he didn't want to limit the view from his kitchen. I considered his request, forgot about it, and installed two solid eight foot long, seven feet tall panels that completely blocked his kitchen windows! Take that, Ass Clown! Oh, and the best part? I saved the latch from the hutch and installed it right where he could see it, thumping it every time I walked by.


Best served cold, right?

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