I must admit to a problem: I become more upset by small animal sob-stories than human ones. I’m reading Metro on the 7:47 to Victoria and can feel myself welling up.
Midge the dwarf rabbit, who amazingly had its keepers ‘living in fear’ has now been branded a monster, and I can’t see what the future would look like for Midge without the saving grace of the rescue group Bunny Angels. The eye-popping line in the piece is the response from Midge’s breeder when contacted by the noble rescuer; ‘If they’re not right they go in the bin.’ I’m au fait with the ancient practice of kittens-in-the-river but bunnies-in-the-bin is a new atrocity in a world of atrocities.
The stony-hearted breeder has been duly reported to The British Rabbit Council, and I’m sure justice will be swift and brutal – I’ve heard you don’t fuck with the BRC. The figure of 100,000 rabbits in rescue centres also fills me with hate for humanity and its casual and frivolous ownership of animals… don’t start me on the surge in dog ownership and subsequent abandonment as I might shit myself in anger on the carriage floor.
Why oh why do we have this urge to ‘own’ animals? Can’t we be content to watch them frolic in natural habitats rather than putting them in a cute bandana and parading them around the streets? Lonely people who are alone and unhappy should be excluded from this and be permitted to ‘own’ animals; that I understand, as it is mutually beneficial to all parties. These needy souls are also less likely to keep 34 cats and an iguana in their own excrement in a Sheffield bedsit.
Have you seen the number of TV ad campaigns about animal suffering? There are now easily as many as there are for fucked-up African children and abused UK waifs. Anyway…
My mother and I would spend time at Bristol Zoo when the old man was working in the area (he was a multinational drug dealer) and 90% of the visit would be spent watching my mum weeping as the baby gibbons miserably wandered their shitty enclosure – their gibbon mother occasionally holding them up for us to see, as if we somehow had the wherewithal to take them away from this misery. Even at the tender age I then was (six or seven?) I instinctively knew that this was indeed a dreadful place. The only respite I remember was watching the camels piss… My Lord a camel can evacuate its bladder like a fire hose.
What of poor Midge? I tried to contact the BRC to find its fate but they told me to piss off, Midge is probably cat food by now. Such is the lot of being a small violent bunny.
This rabbit does of course remind me of the vicious one who was the guardian of The Cave Of Caerbannog in the Monty Python and the Holy Grail movie… google it kids… I’m sure its why they ran the story in the first place.
