Romancing Honeysuckle

Honeysuckle just hopped past where I’m working on the porch. She needed a drink after nibbling the rubber seal off the door to Anita’s studio. She’s doubled in size the last two weeks, (or is that bloat from rug fringe and Denis’ slipper toes?) and when she bounds up the ramp and bangs into her hutch you know it. This latest addition was added to the household because angora bunnies produce beautiful wool that can be spun into fine yarn and as a fiber artist, that is Anita’s intention. Whatever Honeysuckle’s value in that department, she has certainly been another interesting individual to indulge.

At first she was going to live in her hutch in the yard, but we’ve made room for her on the back porch where she roams freely using her litter box when necessary, eating dandelions, apple branches and rabbit kibble. As long as someone is around to make sure she doesn’t gnaw on electric cords, we let her in the house. She steadfastly ignores me unless I offer her a  banana slice which she will eat in any condition, peels and all. This does spare me from freezing them only to pitch them out six months later because I didn’t make banana bread after all.

She likes my donkey tails houseplant and I’m pretty lazy about removing her from it. Forgive me, dear Mary Jane, but I plan to sacrifice it to Honeysuckle even though almost every day the plant reminds me of you and all you suffered. But some day I’ll be where you are again and we will probably make gardens even more beautiful than the one you had in Durango.

I think it is awfully indulgent when Denis laughs as she pulls books off the bottom shelf in our front room and eats their spines and corners. (You would think this slightly inconsistent, too, if you knew how precioussss his books are.) I decided to buy her some special books when we stopped at a used bookstore so she could lay off the Tom Clancy spy novels. They can be her very own and she can snack on them whenever she wants. The cheapest paperbacks were bodice rippers and I carefully chose three for their titles: Hot to the Touch, Awaken to Pleasure, and Forbidden Temptation. When I went to pay I was going to tell the guy-clerk that they weren’t really for me, they were for our friend’s rabbit who liked to eat books, but then I thought that if he did care about good writing he’d just stare at me with pity. A rabbit. Like, right, lady.