Rabbit Terrorizes Dog

by Jerry Blackerby

A few months after losing Sam, the paper-trained rabbit, an uncle gave the kids another young rabbit. Uncle Ab raised rabbits. I do not know what breed they were, but I found out later that they grew to be quite large because they were used as food. Rabbit tastes similar to chicken and quite a few people in southeastern Oklahoma raised rabbits for food.

Since Sam had been such a fine pet, I did not think anything about accepting the gift. I did not look to see how big this rabbit would grow. Sam was never very big.

When we got home, I got out the metal hutch we had used with Sam and fixed it up for the new rabbit, which we named Sam Junior, or SJ for short.

We had a little dog that was a mix of Toy Poodle and Chihuahua named Chi-Chi. Chi-Chi was only about eight inches tall when she was full-grown. She was only a few months old when we acquired SJ. Chi-Chi had full run of the house and SJ was confined to the hutch most of the time. SJ never became paper-trained like Sam, but we did let him out once in a while to hop around the house.

Pretty soon, SJ was much bigger than Chi-Chi. I began to notice that SJ would torment Chi-Chi so was careful when I let him out. When we went to the store or anywhere, we always put SJ back into the hutch. We began coming home from a shopping trip and would find Chi-Chi on top of the couch back shaking like a leaf and SJ standing on the floor terrorizing Chi-Chi.

At first, I thought we had left the hutch door unlatched. As it happens, SJ was smart and learned how to reach through the hutch and release the door latch. I discovered this by hiding and watching. As soon as we would look the hutch door and leave the room, SJ would start reaching through the hutch bars to unlock the door. After a few tries, he would open the door.

We had to wire the door shut. Even then, when we let SJ out to play, he would terrorize Chi-Chi. I was afraid that Chi-Chi would get a complex so we gave SJ to some people that raised rabbits.

Chi-Chi was with us for several years. We never tried to have another rabbit, because I am sure we could never find another rabbit like Sam.