Best Bunny Story Ever by Michael Harris, PhD

A client of mine told me this story today; I thought I would share it.

She has a brother she visits in Houston and while walking on the beach he tells her about his next-door-neighbor and a "strange thing" that happened during the summer.

The brother’s neighbor comes over and asks if the brother would look after their home and pick-up the mail while they were on vacation for a week. The brother says “yes” and notes that they didn’t ask him to watch after the bunny that he knows is in a cage in their backyard. He remembered thinking it unusual but not strange.

The following morning he is about to check on the neighbor’s house and pick-up their mail before he goes to work when out of the corner of his eye; he sees his chocolate labrador retriever playing in the backyard with “something”. The dog is obviously having a great time throwing “something” into the air and catching it while racing wildly through the yard.

Going into the backyard calls the dog over to him and discovers to his shock, that the dog is playing with a very wet and now, very dead bunny. Horrified at what the neighbor is going to think he takes the limp bunny from the dog into the kitchen to think about what he’s going to do.

He decides to wash the bunny and even though it’s dead, he’s going to put it back into the cage and act like nothing happened. So, after a thorough washing and blow-drying of this now deceased bunny, back the bunny goes into the cage, while the brother can do nothing except wait for the neighbor’s return.

A week later, the neighbor returns and come over to thank the brother for watching the house and picking up the mail. The brother says “anytime” and offers nothing else to that part of the conversation. They continue to have coffee and chat about the vacation until it’s time for the neighbor to leave.

The neighbor says, “you know, the only strange thing about this vacation was that the night before we left our bunny died”. We buried him in the backyard and although the kids were upset by the time we got back; they were kind of over the loss of their pet and looking forward to getting a new bunny. The really strange thing was when we got back home, the bunny was back in the cage and it looked like he had been to the beauty parlor.

Feel free to pass this one around, I have laughed that hard in a while.

Michael Harris, PhD