LIAN TANNER

Word. By word. By word.

December 20th, 2010

Ugh. I’ve been away from my desk for three weeks and it shows. It’s always a struggle to get back into it. The words come … very … slowly. But the book won’t write itself, so I am sticking to it – with lots of breaks for cups of tea and walks around the garden.

Speaking of which … I came home from Adelaide to find that something had been chewing at my carrot seedlings. Hmm. Too much devastation for snails or earwigs. Maybe grasshoppers? But they usually prefer the small seedlings, whereas the ones being eaten were big. I went off to bed feeling as if I had slipped into a children’s story (‘Someone’s been eating my porridge …’).

Next morning I was in the garden again (yes, the words are coming VERY slowly) when my cat dashed past, chased by a grey, flop-eared rabbit (very small cat, very large rabbit). Mystery solved – I wasn’t in Three Bears Land at all, I was in Beatrix Potter country. There turned out to be two rabbits (the other one was pitch black), and they’d obviously escaped from somewhere. If they’d been looking little and lost and frightened, I’d have caught them, but they seemed to be having a nice time and were suitably plump, so I merely covered my carrots with bird netting and left the bunnies to enjoy themselves.

Rabbit paradise

Yes, it’s probably irresponsible of me, and I’m not sure how long they’ll last on the lam (they look as if they’ve been loose for a few months). But I deeply disapprove of the small cages that people keep pet rabbits in, so have no intention of sending them back to captivity. Rabbits like to kick up their heels in the morning, and a rabbit kicking up its heels for the sheer joy of living is a sight not easily forgotten. (So if you’ve got a pet rabbit, go outside RIGHT NOW and build a decent run for it.)

I’m curious to know what other people would have done. Catch them? Leave them? Which is better, a short satisfying life with danger just around the corner and considerable risk of early death, or a long safe life with no real problems except boredom?

5 thoughts on “Word. By word. By word.

  1. nikki says:

    hi Lian
    at our house we’ve got a family of rabbits in our cul-de-sac.
    they get in our vegetable patch and eat our grass but we just chase them away.the only annoying thing is that our dog eats their poo(yuck.)I agree that animals such as rabbits and guinea pigs should have a place to run around most of the time.

    P.S.I love The first Keepers book I can’t wait for the next to come out.

    1. Lian says:

      Hi Nikki. Dogs. Hmm. What can you say? They really will eat anything, won’t they? But your rabbit family sounds nice, if slightly annoying. I think someone must have caught my rabbits – I haven’t seen them for the last week. Or maybe they saw the bird netting I put on the carrots and went away in a huff. 🙂 Glad you liked Museum of Thieves. I can’t wait for the next one to come out either, even though I know what’s in it. Nine months to go and counting down …

  2. Romi says:

    Hmm… In my opinion (I’m very much against animal cruelty and unhappiness) I may have caught them, I think that if the person who owned them loved them enough (and occasionaly let them out at home, though inside isn’t the best idea… I know from experience, but my cat’s would most likely be afriad of ANY rabbits!) and if they went out and held them every day and lovingly cared for them (and they had a lovely big hutch) they would be happier then in the wild… unless of course they had a certain wild streak…

    1. Lian says:

      You could be right, Romi. I need a little sign in my back garden – ‘If you prefer to stay at liberty, scratch here. If you’d rather go back home, nibble here.’ Always hard to know what is the best to do in such circumstances.

  3. Romi says:

    That sounds like a perfect idea!

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