A Gilded Run

Her father built the cage out of wood he had brought home stealthily over several weeks. It was a basic wooden structure with a side door closed by a simple wooden latch. Weekly she cleaned the straw, swapping the damp yellowed pungent strands with fresh brittle clumps. Once she forgot to clean the cage for weeks and when she finally did she pulled away the soiled hay to discover a flickering, moving, winking carpet of earwigs. This memory still had the power to torment her years later.

Rosie was a fine white rabbit, large and healthy, oft fed on gone-to-seed lettuces and stunted carrots. Her cage was mundane, ordinary, but her run was bespoke and splendid. Full six feet long and three feet wide, a hollow mattress gilded with pliant silver wire. Rosie enjoyed frequent sorties in her run.

One day the girl returned home from school to find her mother looking mutinous and chagrinned. Carefully she explained to the girl how the Alsatian had gotten hold of Rosie between its teeth and shaken her 'like a rag doll'. The mother, seeing this from the upstairs bedroom window had flown into the garden, seized the father's convenient pitchfork and charged towards the giant dog. As she screamed with fear and anger the dog turned. Their eyes locked: the Alsatian, the mother. Suddenly the rabbit plummeted as the dog now focused on the woman, effortless challenge in his eyes. She turned abruptly, discarded the heavy pitchfork and hurtled comically back to the house. Shaking now and sobbing she flung herself through the white painted back door. The Alsatian wandered off, nonchalantly one supposes.

Later, when she ventured out again it was to cradle the limp, heavy, but still breathing rabbit into her arms.
'She was alive. But the vet said the shock would have killed her. Rabbits, you see, they're nervous. Being shaken by a large dog, well it was too much for her.'

That evening in her bedroom the girl played back the scene in her head. It was the vision of her mother, legs dancing in the air as she turned full tilt to escape the dog. And Rosie, supine and sagging, nestling in her mother's arms, still alive, but not for long.

The next day she came home from school, pushed open the side gate and entered, there to see the sphinx-like pose of the Alsatian lying on the grass, gazing at her levelly, 'Come back for my rabbit.' She turned, screaming, disbelief, incredulity, a fleeting revulsion at unfinished canine business. The very last image she had expected on the suburban green lawn.