Broke-down Bunny

I think that this may go down as one of Scott's favorite Claudie stories.

One lovely Sunday afternoon while Scott was mowing the yard, Claudia ran up to him breathless holding a plastic bag. She exclaimed in a panicked voice, "Daddy, I need your help! There is a broke-down bunny! Come on!"

She grabbed Scott's hand and led him across the street from our house and urgently pointed to a dead bunny on the side of the road. She had been biking and come upon this sad scene. She handed the bag to Scott and told him that he needed to take care of the bunny. (She did not like the way the bunny looked at her.) Scott scooped up the bunny and bought it to the garbage can.

Claudia was genuinely sad for the bunny and asked Scott if it was going to be lonely in the garbage can without any of its bunny friends and she thought maybe she could put some toys in the can with it. Scott explained that we throw away a lot of "interesting" things and the bunny would find things to play with in the can. She seemed satisfied with that.

Scott has asked Claudia a number of times to repeat the story of the broke-down bunny and when she is asked what it means to be a "broke-down" bunny, she will say that the bunny "died-ed."

It is sort of a sad and gross story if you think about it, but the part that I like best is that she really did feel for the little bunny and wanted to make sure that it was entertained while awaiting the trip to the dump. (Of course she doesn't really realize where the garbage ends up. I know that we should tell her about landfills and whatnot in order to give her some "green education," but that sure wasn't the time!)