MORE TALES OF THE BUNNY and More Lessons from the Move

The excitement of our anticipated move to California is wearing thin, as the stress of culling and packing piles up. I’ve had an indoor/online tag sale and a yarn sale. With the help of my good friend Roma Dee Holmes, the process was manageable and profitable.

But now comes the studio. And things are getting really, really hard.

Compounding the agonizing and confusing process of what goes and what stays is my upcoming Open Studio. I need to have my studio still look like…well, my studio, not a FEMA-worthy disaster site.

And of course, there is the Big Question yet to be answered:

What do I do with Bunster?

Bunster in her youth, with the run of my studio.

Bunster is about 129 in bunny years. She used to have the run of my studio, sitting at my feet ready to chew the hem of my jeans if she didn’t get enough attention. She would follow visitors around, knowing I’d given them Cheerios for her. She kept my friend Russ Moline of The Moses House in business by chewing through power cords for my sewing machine, my computer, and my work lamps. (He keeps my sewing machines repaired and happy.) He always had the same advice for curbing her chewing habit. “Hasenpfeffer!” he’d say cheerfully.

A few years ago, I realized I didn’t see as much of her. She hid. A lot. I realized she was losing her sight, and her hearing. She was stiff and moved more slowly. She stopped using her litter box. I hated to do it, but I set up a big cage for her with hidey boxes, a heat lamp and plenty of food and treats. She’s comfortable there, and I try to spend time with her every day.

Some days I look at her and think, “Not much more time.” Other days, she aggressively snatches a Dorito out of my hand with the same piggy grunt and runs off to happily munch her salty snack. (She’s 13, we think, and I now let her eat anything she wants.) She lets me hold her now, and I do so as much as I can.

But will I be able to bring her to California with me?

It’s one thing to have a huge cage in our mudroom. It’s another to have one in a small apartment (which is all we can afford in Santa Rosa). It’s one thing to to have her here with me today. It’s another to try to travel cross-country with two dogs, a cat and an elderly rabbit.

I’ve decided not to worry until it’s actually time to make a decision. But it’s still always on my mind.

Today I finished clearing off a huge work table in my studio, where I pile up the fabrics I’m working with. When I cleared out the space UNDER the table, I found Bunster’s last stash of….

See how Bunster turns an ordinary piece of fiber into a million tiny pieces.

Well, I don’t know what to call them. Except she does a beautiful job of chewing ordinary fabric into teensy-tiny frayed fragments.

Each tiny scrap is beautiful!

In fact, the first time she found a fabric stash, I freaked out. Until I realized she’d shredded a piece of fiber (a kilim rug scrap) into tiny beautifully-frayed “dots”, something I couldn’t do myself. Her teeth give the perfect aged time-worn look to new and vintage fabrics. Early on, I realized they were the perfect size for little pops of color in my smaller fiber pieces.

There are some squares (how does she know??) but also delightfully free-form shapes.

She taught me that what’s in her nature–chew!–could be seen as a destructive force or a constructive process. Or better yet, a transformative process. She turns something ordinary into something else. Something with the look of antiquity.

Okay, just so we don’t go too far with the woo-woo….She’s also not too discriminating about WHAT she turns into tiny pieces. Like this plastic bag.

My husband found me on the floor, picking up these last tiny Bunster-chewed scraps. He asked what I was doing, and laughed when I told him. Then he stopped. “You’re serious?” he said. “You’re really saving those little pieces?” Yes, I told him. I knew exactly which fabrics they were from, how little I had left of those special colors and textures, and they were the perfect size.

Yep, that’s a Bunster-chewed scrap!

And as I gathered them up, I realized this might be one of Bunster’s last gifts to me. I’ve learned so much from this fearful yet fierce, frail yet resiliant little creature.

Yes, I’ve given her a home, love, warmth, wonderful food. She’s given me so much more. Tiny scraps of color for my artwork. Lessons on letting go. Stories that help me find the blessing in even the smallest of life’s set-backs. The sure knowledge that there is a place for me in the world.

Beautiful stories are everywhere around us. If only we take the time, and open our hearts, to see them.