I shared my life with a group of bunnies for a lot of years. The first was “big bun” and then there were many more. Sometimes on their own and sometimes in groups – the maximum at any point was a dozen bunnies and four guinea pigs. When we came to Cornwall we had only a single bunny left and he died within about a year of being here. When we lost him, we didn’t get any more because we live in the heart of a massive wild community of rabbits and they are in and out of our garden all the time. Sadly for the bunnies and disgracefully for humans, we get repeated episodes of myxomatosis and we decided that this meant it would be unwise to get any more pet rabbits. So, for the last seven years or so I’ve been without a bunny in my life.

I miss bunnies. They have a particular delicious smell that is hard to describe, the best I can do is to put a pot of hay on a radiator and inhale – warm hay is as close as anything to essence of bunny. Of course their smell is only one part of their charm. The rest is in the fabulous, fine fur that is quite unlike anything else – the animal with fur closest to rabbit fur that I have ever touched is a koala, although I only ever once touched a koala and that was in Australia in 1988, when I was given one to hug and there is an amazing photo of me, koala in my arms with a huge grin spread across my face. I’m told tourists are no longer allowed the pleasure of a hug from a koala and so I feel privileged to have done it before the ban.

Rabbits are much better and yet much worse pets than you can imagine. They are wonderful companion animals if you are an adult and able to handle them with sufficient strength to make sure they feel safe and therefore don’t kick. They will fulfil the role of a pet dog happily – they can be house-trained and will happily sit on your knee, lick you and play games with you like a dog. They are terrible pets for young children who are rarely, in my experience, strong enough to hold them securely and therefore the rabbits get frightened, kick and scratch and hence end up alone, lonely and neglected in their hutch. That’s how I ended up having so many in my life. People would come to me with a rabbit sob story of neglected pet that’s leading a lonely and miserable life. They’d ask me to take the rabbit in so I’d end up with another. I’d get the males neutered then pair them with females so they were never lonely again.

Sadly for me, most of the rabbits that came to me later on were unable to be handled because their trust of humans had been totally lost so my main role was to keep them fed and warm and provide them with companionship. Even so, I had some delightful times with them and miss having a close relationship with a rabbit. So, here is a pot of hay that’s been nicely warmed that I am just about to stick my nose in for a fix of essence of bunny.