Wigglenose

Courage is not the absence of fear, but the mastery of it.

Mark Twain

When you’re a kid, most birthday gifts are opened, played with, and soon forgotten. The toy we think we want so badly turns out to be nothing like the TV advertisement that made you drive your parents crazy until they finally got it for you. Maybe that bike turns out to be of no use because you learn that you have an insurmountable problem with balance. But if you’re fortunate, there are a few gifts that stand out, and one birthday gift memory has stayed with me through the years. It was the year I got a truly special, one-of-a-kind gift.

We went to the pet store to see if there was a pet on which my parents and I could agree. It was a really small-town kind of pet store on a corner of Main Street, with fliers advertising everything from discount pet items to the latest concert tickets for the owner’s band, covering the windows. Inside were double-stacked rows of various breeds of fish, some glowing bright neon colors, some striped with long rippling fins, all in large bubbling aquariums. The whole place had a peculiarly unpleasant, wet kind of smell. I wasn’t sure I wanted anything from this place; that is, until I saw the rabbit pen. Rabbits are tremendously powerful creatures; way beyond anything their size and demeanor would suggest. Throughout my lifetime on this blue marble, I’d seen a wide assortment of rabbits, all kinds: wild and tame, large and small, floppy ears and raised, black, gray, brown, and spotted, but from the moment I saw this albino sitting alone in the pet store’s rabbit pen, I knew he was special. He was powerful. His bright pink-red eyes were a strong contrast against the bright white of his fur. They drew me in, and he nuzzled my hand with his wiggly, perfectly triangular nose and long, curious whiskers. Picking him up, I felt his heartbeat pounding fast, then slowing as I held him closer. He felt like a blanket: soft, warm, and fluffy. He didn’t fight being held like the other bunnies I’d known. Taking extra care not to squeeze him too tightly, I held him firmly in my tiny arms. As he nuzzled deep into my chest, I couldn’t help thinking how his fur made him look like a little snowball. Gently, I stroked his back and ears while holding him close to my heart, as mothers do for a newborn human baby; only his nose and whiskers were wiggling.

Albinos have this mysterious, stop-you-in-your-tracks look about them; there was no debating the obvious fact that we had an immediate connection. Albinos are rare, and he certainly didn’t belong alone in a pet store, crammed full of miscellaneous snakes, chameleons, fish, and turtles. The guy who owned the pet store smoked like his life depended on it, so between the reptile smell, the smoke, and the poor lighting, the place didn’t have the most welcoming atmosphere. My parents were watching me interact with my new friend. I shot them my most emphatic, teary-eyed please let me have this look. This bunny had to come home with me; I could tell he had been waiting for this moment for me to take him home. The owner let out a throat-clearing grunt and snuffed out his cigarette. After putting the money my mom gave him in the register, he lit another cigarette while he packed our purchase in a box that was shaped like a tiny house with holes in the sides. Bunny and I were glad to be outside and done with the pet store atmosphere. Little did I know that this little ball of fluff would forever change my thinking on all things small and would soon become my very best friend.

In the cardboard house-shaped box, we transported our bunny from the pet store to our house in the suburbs of Pennsylvania’s steel city. Mom, Dad, and I lived there with my grandparents on my dad’s side. Were I to guess from the style, the house was built somewhere in the 1940s on a horseshoe-shaped dirt road, long before the prefab housing craze caught on. It was a simple house, with a whitewashed dirt-walled basement that always had the faint scent of laundry soap and lye. A painted white wooden two-story house with a large porch running along two-thirds of the front. The backdoor had a small cement slab with an equally small pergola covering attached. Our house had a nice leafy climbing tree in the backyard. It had an unusually large, hedged-in backyard for a suburban house. That was probably because of my grandmother’s green thumb.

Grandma grew amazing things in the backyard: yellow, pink, and white climbing roses grew around a painted white wagon wheel across from a grape arbor full of deep purple, incredibly juicy Concord grapes. She’d make the most delicious, perfectly balanced, not too sweet, not too sour jellies, jams, and juices from the grapes when they were ready for picking. Sometimes she let me help with the canning process, but she’d get frustrated because I liked to eat the grapes too much. We had the only fruit-bearing peach tree not in a hothouse in the whole tri-state area. Grandma grew leaf lettuce (bunny would love that), tomatoes, and, my favorite, rhubarb. No small task considering the backyard was all slope, bumps, and hills with no level patches, and Grandma was all of 4’ 10”. Her skin was lily-white; she had sapphire-blue eyes and was a tiny red-haired spitfire of a woman. It was Grandma who taught me about the growing seasons of fruits and flowers. For example, she taught me that even though the plant was tasty, the leaves of rhubarb are toxic to eat. We would sometimes use the large rhubarb leaves as a hat for sun protection, and the best time to eat the rhubarb plant is April through July. She taught me that all parts of living things have a purpose. We have only to find what that purpose is.

Pets were a strange array for me as a kid, while other kids around the neighborhood had dogs, cats, and goldfish. I had two Rhode Island red chickens (given to me by a cousin), red-eared turtles, and a chameleon, not all at once, of course. In comparison, this tiny new bunny would unquestionably be the most traditional pet I’d had. Life was a kind of mini-farm in the sub-burbs at our house. Near the kitchen door, between the refrigerator and the little breakfast table, we built a small portable indoor hutch out of reclaimed wood and chicken wire to be our bunny’s new home. We lined the bottom of the hutch with pages from old editions of the Sunday Pittsburgh Press. On top of the newspapers, I placed a bowl of greenish-brown bunny pellets. They smelled funny and did not look appetizing, but the pet store said he would need the pellets to supply things he would normally get in the wild. Some fresh leafy lettuce and a shallow bowl of water completed his new home. Not long after, coming to live with us, we learned that our particular bunny refused to drink water from any source, even the bottle designed for that purpose. Through stressful trial and error, we discovered our bunny's preference for ice cubes rather than liquid. He and I had that in common. Crushed ice has always been a weakness of mine.

Once introduced to the hutch, he looked ever so comfortable in his new home. In the summer, a gentle and inviting breeze came through the kitchen screen door, and the constant vibrating hum of the old refrigerator provided a deep, calming background noise. In the kitchen, my new friend would be safe from predators and all the night creatures inhabiting our backyard. Often, in my pajamas, I would sneak down from my upstairs bedroom. I’d gently remove him from the hutch, putting him in my lap ever so quietly he and I would have these secret nighttime visits.

Over the next months, he’d be nibbling a carrot or some lettuce and having an ice cube in his bowl while I’d sit on the floor next to the hutch and tell him all my little kid secrets. When he got bigger, he and I would play in the dining room. He would stand/sit on his powerful hind legs in my previously discarded pink doll highchair while I’d feed him snacks of carrot sticks and celery tops. He was so much better than a doll. I gave him popcorn once, which made him sick. Popcorn is not a food that bunnies can digest. This makes sense, since where would a bunny get popcorn in the wild? After that, I stuck to the diet the pet store had given us. On sweltering summer days, we’d go outside and sit in the grass. Sometimes on wintry days, I’d put a bright red collar on him so he wouldn’t be invisible in the snow.

One warm summer day, behind the heavy wooden porch railing, my mother and I were sitting on the old wicker love-seat, taking a break from the summer heat. A lovely breeze was coming across the railing. gently blowing the tree branches, combining the scent of Grandma’s roses and pine needles. It was a perfectly normal day. My mother, wearing a stiffly pressed yellow and white cotton dress, was sipping iced tea from a bright pink metal tumbler. I was in pigtails and a green sundress, watching Wiggle-nose; that was the name I’d given my long-eared friend. Watching Wiggle-nose live his life was one of my favorite things to do. Presently, he was on a leash tethered to the big old tree growing in the front yard in front of the porch, nibbling on some fresh blades of grass. At least the day seemed normal, but things are seldom as they seem, and we didn’t know that soon we would be watching a modern-day version of David and Goliath play out in our little patch of suburbia. Wiggle-nose was about to teach me that bravery often comes in the most unlikely of packages.

The nearest neighbors to our house lived in the bend of our dead-end street, and their backyard was the length of a football field away. Because of the bend in the road, their backyard was catty-corner from our front yard, making it easy to see from our front porch. They owned this monstrously large, white and black prize-winning English sheepdog. He was scary because his eyes couldn’t be seen under his bangs, and if anyone came into his yard, he growled and snarled. He did this not only to strangers but to every human who happened by. The neighbors who owned him would say he was a working dog, not a pet, and as such, not for playing, which didn’t matter to me because I didn’t want to have anything to do with him anyway. If they weren’t getting him ready for a show, the dog was on a short leash, tied to a doghouse in their backyard, barking away at unsuspecting birds, squirrels, and just about anything that moved into its view. I don’t think he could see very far, but motion easily distracted him; even the wind would set him to jumping and barking. Mom and I weren’t concerned; while quite noisy and at least three times the size of Wiggle-nose, the dog never got loose or came into our yard. Never, until this one Saturday, about a year after Wiggle-nose got settled in.

That’s when it happened. No one would have believed it. I wouldn’t have believed it had I not seen the whole thing unfold before my own eyes. It all happened so fast. A gigantic ball of long white and black fur bounding down from the next-door neighbor’s backyard toward Wiggle-nose. Long black-and-white fur bouncing, barking, snarling, terrifying, and then me lunging out of my seat, my mother’s tight grasp yanking the back of my dress as I fell backward into her arms and away from the oncoming danger. My mother wasn’t afraid of anything, least of all dogs. Fearing the worst, I pushed and wiggled, but Mom held on too tight. I couldn’t get away. Then the most amazing thing happened. Wiggle-nose let out this high-pitched squeal-like noise, leaped high into the air, did a back flip perfect as any Olympic gymnast, and came down full-force. Biting the sheepdog square on his leathery nose. The dog was stunned as the rest of us turned and took off, yelping and dripping blood from his wounded nose. Running away, back to his domain, never to enter our yard again.

At first, Mom and I didn’t move. Everything, even the breeze, seemed to stand still as we tried to process the battle we’d just seen. An overwhelming list of things for my young brain to process: bunnies can make a noise, bunnies or Wiggle-nose at least, can battle challengers more than three times their size, it was possible, the neighbor’s sheepdog could get loose…the list was too hard and too long to think about. Wiggle-nose, being the tremendously confident bunny he was, was all poofed up and looking entirely pleased with himself. All I could think was: I wanted to save my friend, but as it turned out, he didn’t need saving. One note here: not everyone needs or wants saving is one of those lessons I’m still struggling with decades later.

Back to that day, when time started up again. Mom sent me inside while she took our little disheveled warrior to the garden hose on the side of the house to inspect for wounds and get the sheepdog's nose out of his fur. Thankfully, Wiggle-nose, unlike the sheepdog, was completely unscathed. Mom brought Wiggle-nose inside, and while sitting cross-legged on the kitchen floor, my lap draped with a large bath towel, I finished drying him. He had a warrior-sized carrot that night, and he seemed fine. Just in case, I made many trips down the stairs from my room to check on him that night. Animals tend to get over things faster than humans. But after that, we thought it best to be safe and have any grazing done in the backyard, free from the danger of invading sheepdogs.