Ok, so a few weeks ago, on a cold and rainy afternoon, Jill and I were heading to the store when Jill pointed out a really cute little bunny hopping around in the bushes outside of our apartment building.
Upon observation, we decided that the bunny was NOT a wild rabbit (the main clue was that it was white with black/brown spots, and that it casually hopped about 10 feet away when we approached it, rather than disappearing into the underbrush). We looked around and realized that no one else was paying attention the rabbit, and we decided that it had probably been let go or escaped from someone. We also surmised that it probably wouldn't last very long in the wild, so we decided to catch it and give it to someone who could take care of it.
So, about an hour later (and having used a carrot as a threatening tool rather than a temptation), we managed to trap it in a box. Then, we were like, where can we take this thing? We aren't allowed to have pets inside of our building (on pain of eviction), and we weren't sure if any of our friends would want it. Then, Jill remembered what looked like a small, private pet shop down the street from our apartment, so we took it there to see if they would know what to do.
Well, this pet shop turned out to be a huge chain that sells an astounding variety of fish and cuddly animals, and they took the rabbit off of our hands after we told them the story. The guy we gave it too (I guess he was some sort of manager) told us that he would talk to the store's breeder to see if she could take it.
Ok, so it would seem that the story ended there. But wait! We went to the pet store on Sunday to check out the animals, and what would we happen to see but a rabbit...In a cage on the floor... Apart from the other rabbits...That looked mysteriously like the rabbit that we had brought in...For FIFTY DOLLARS!!!
Is that crazy or what? I have checked out their web site, and they say that they have staff veterinarians that check out all of their animals, so it is possible that the $50 is just their having to pass on vet fees and maybe medications. But come on, who pays $50 for a rabbit? When I was in 4-H, I only paid $15 for my high-quality breeding stock rabbits, and we only managed to get $1.25 a head when we sold their prize-winning (adult) offspring! Now, this was not a special rabbit that we had found. It wasn't a lop or rex or one of the more exotic varieties of rabbit (they had mini lops in another area specifically for bunnies). This thing was just a white rabbit with some black and brown spotting (which you can pretty much make by crossing a meat-variety Californian with any dark-colored variety of straight-eared rabbit). Anyway, just had to get that off of my chest and celebrate the irony of it all!
