Bunny Boiling

The Giant Boy wants a dog.I do not want a dog.Impasse. Except of course, that it isn't; because he will not let sleeping dog disputes  lie. The weapons he has in his armoire include pestering; the drip drip drip of water on stone technique of refined nagging that, unfortunately. he learnt from me, and the nuclear armament that is my Mother.Huge dog fan, my mother .He also does "Mentioning Dogs" each time a dog appears in life,or upon the television screen,and also "Puppy Eyes".The latter involves him turning his big grey peepers on me in a soulful manner, looking up from under his eyelashes sighingly, and  delivering roughly this speech (with the odd variation); "Oh,Mum! If we only had a dog,I would be so happy and do better at school, too, I shouldn't wonder. The X-Box would lose its magnetic pull for me, I would not care to exterminate zombies..no more would I clamp myself to the mattress on a school morning.No! I would be out exercising "Zambesi" or "Beelzebub", running about Princes Park in a healthy manner. When returning from school I shouldn't be loitering in "Subway" on Allerton Road with my dubious chums, threatening my fellows with phrases akin to " I Will Pop a Cap in Your Ass, You Typing Error!" anymore. All these things and more that you haven't found out about yet would be left in the past, as I rushed home to feed and exercise MY DOG!".

Ah yes. All very persuasive.  But there is the outstanding Matter Of The Rabbit,as yet unresolved to my entire satisfaction.

When GB was seven, I caved in badly (see aforementioned psychological warfare methods) and bought him a rabbit.It was caramel-coloured, very wuffly as to nose, and totally thick, even for a bun. We called it "Lucian". It's main objective was to eat everything in the world, escape, and then be eaten.Well,that's rabbits for you.Shallow. It lived in a commodious wooden hutch in  our garden in Mossley Hill. His father took him away on a ski-ing holiday to France .That's GB's father, not the rabbit's father ,about whom we knew dismayingly little. I was by then C.O in Charge Of Feeding and Muck anyway, the seven-year-old having become bitterly disillusioned with the entertainment potential of a rabbit . And vice versa, I imagine.

On Day Two, I went out to feed,water, and discuss the finer points of the "Today" programme with Lucian before  I went to work. Understandably, perhaps, he had fled (flewn,flud,fledded...it doesn't look right,does it?). There was a hole in the hutch.

I searched for that bothersome rabbit for ages, climbing into neighbouring gardens and making carrot noises. The neighbours, (despite the fact that they had been lobbying to have me put away for a while now) looked both high and low. I don't think they liked waking up to find a pallid figure clambering about in their bushes. Too Gothic for Mossley Hill.

On Day Three, six in the morning,  I noticed something on the frosty lawn.I opened the French windows in my nightie (insert own joke), and investigated. There had been a Murrrrrrder. Or a very inventive suicide. Bits of scattered Lucian were showing up nicely aganst the whitened lawn. Unpleasantness with bin-bags and rubber gloves ensued.But I could not find the little bugger's head. I didn't have soupy plans for it or anything , you understand, I just didn't want it turning up later in a Grand Guignol fashion when the child was fossicking about in the garden with a sensitive mate whose parents were lawyers. So various friends of mine were surprised to recieve a call from me upon the subject of "If a cat or a fox kills a rabbit, do they take trophies?"quite early in the day.

When Child (normal-sized at that stage) returned from Chamonix, I had my story. Lucian, I said, had met a female rabbit, and it had been just one of those wild, crazy things.He would understand, when he was older. SO they had run off together to ..erm... The Woods, and were even now happily multiplying. Of course, despite having been brassily indifferent to Lucian in the later stages of their relationship, the Child was steeped in grief.  I felt pretty bad about this but it was the lesser of several evils,considering. If the head turned up later,I would just have to say that the romance hadn't worked out and Lucian had shot himself.

We all "Moved On". Some years later,in an inconsequential conversation in a taxi cab, The Child informed me that his father (French)  had told HIM that I had slain the rabbit myself, because I "could not be bozzaired to clean him". I was outraged. I said "Darling,do you honestly think I would actually KILL a creature? " He considered this for longer than was flattering, then said"No, I think you would have taken him back to the petshop and got a refund".

However, mud ,once thrown, does stick. A longer period has to elapse, I think, before I am able to fully clear my name. So a dog,as such, may have to wait. I just have to play for time.