Experimental space animals around the world took stock last week after five Russian sex geckos fell off the twig mid-orbit. On paper it sure looks glamorous as hell up there. For the go-getting chimp or the adventurous fruit-fly swarm, it can seem like a decent chance to get out of the rat race and, you know, really make a difference while rumpscuttling like billy-o on the company dime. Plus when you’re off the clock there are all those white cat-suits and Perspex furniture and intergalactic caped folk swizzling electric-blue cocktails. But the shine wears off once the suns go down and the temperature plummets. As endearing as it is to be able to lick your own eyeballs, things get complicated at -270°c. In the case of the doomed Foton M-4 mission, the heaters failed and those brave little tinkers became reptilian icicles frozen in flagrante. Bravo, you scaly cosmonauts. And sadly, Vale.
Back down on planet CharmingVille, our resident lagomorph needs no interstellar inducement to live up to his ilk’s own pithy idiom and fuck like a rabbit. The Bunster’s libido knows no boundaries, terrestrial or otherwise. He just does it everywhere, 24/7, mounting chairlegs, grunting over prostrate couch cushions and giving what for to anything else he can sink his rodentures into while doing so. They don’t tell you this about rabbits when you get one. Or maybe they do, but not nearly enough. They don’t tell you that rabbits have grim little sex faces. It’s tremendously disconcerting. They also don’t tell you he’ll grow grotesque, high-visibility nads the size of poached eggs. You don’t believe that either ‘til dinner guests point and laugh, with the result that you’re having the lads at Nek Reach run up some modesty pants prior to the next at-home knees-up to protect his feelings. Because despite their relentless stamina as shaggers, rabbits are sensitive fellows, and they’ll soon show you if they’re sick, embarrassed or just plain pissed off.
We knew our furry faux child was deathly ill when he ignored his airflown Polish dill and stopped leaving annoying balls of crap all over the balcony. It was nice to hang out the washing barefoot without wincing on a rock-hard arse pebble. But our fellow could barely raise his little face, let alone anything else, from his favourite bobble mat by the window. When next door’s massively testicled cat sauntered past, our fellow nary batted an eye. Screams from the neighbourhood mad person, drunk tuk tuk fights, the nightly Whitney drag show across the street and the neighbour’s all-hours angle grinding had no effect whatsoever. An impotent, constipated, thump-free Bunster? Vladivostok, we have a problem.
Hubster and I took turns through the evening trying to encourage him to shit and eat. I watched YouTube massage videos and learned all about gastro-intestinal stasis. By 3am I was Google-deep in BinkyLand, a parallel universe chockers with well-meaning and knowledgeable rabbit lovers but also alien abductees, really bad fonts and people who eat paint. For sure I could smell wet dog hair and formaldehyde right through the computer. It wasn’t all underbelly, though: at 3.45 I got on to some Canadian dude called Rodrigo who was possibly a vet and who gave me list of drugs he thought might help. I’m not sure about his brother’s favourite speedball recipe, but the tips on paediatric simethicone seemed legit. He had me tearfully in a tuk tuk and on de la Gare’s doorstep at dawn’s crack.
Back at Marital HQ we prepared for the worst as our fluffy ginga lay curled up in my armpit, licking me weakly where just 12 hours before he’d been maniacally rooting a hole in it. I was sure if there was one thing worse than watching him meekly expire at home, it would be witnessing the supposedly inevitable heart attack that all the rabbit aficionados warned about and that I feared would happen on the way to a sketchy CharmingVille vet. Taking him in a tuk tuk in a plastic chicken basket tied with string would just about do it. Eventually there was nothing for it; our bloke’s only got three legs and he was on the last of them. But the vet turned out not to be sketchy at all and was waiting in scrubs with a comforting smile as we held our sweaty bunny on the table. My tear strings could hold the floodgates no longer. As he panted bravely in my arms, my eye drops rained with a clang onto the steel countertop. The vet checked him all over: the situation was not as dire as we’d feared, and I started to feel better. Then with a flourish she stuck a thermometer up his arse. I saw a faint but tell-tale flicker in his eye. Oh Bunster, you randy bugger. Welcome back.