We can't be sad--ten years is a ridiculously long life for a Mini-Rex rabbit (average lifespan about six years), but it closes a chapter in my daughter's childhood.
Flopsy didn't do any fancy tricks or have any particularly fascinating personality traits--she was just an ordinary rabbit with incredibly soft fur and an overly round tummy. Though recently thinned by age and illness, in her prime she looked more like a fuzzy basketball. Eating seemed to be her primary purpose in life, and even in her old age she could make short work of a large carrot.
I was my daughter's age (16) when I lost my first pet, a basset hound named Herbie. He'd been with us since I was five, and I grieved for a long time. Nearly forty years later I still dream about him--sometimes in my dreams he can talk, and he tells me how much he misses me. And though his passing marked the end of my childhood, he was my inspiration, years later, for my Lunchbox books. A part of me will always be eleven years old, tromping through the neighborhood with Herbie in search of adventure. He was just an ordinary basset hound, but to me he was Rin-tin-tin. He was my sentry dog when I played army; he was my rescue dog when I stepped through a snowdrift and got stuck in a muddy ditch (actually, he just kept walking and left me there to unstick myself), and he was always there to talk to. And I wrote stories--dozens of short stories--about Herbie, in which he was a world traveler, a war hero, or a goofy foil for my brother's pet mouse, who was always the "straight man" in my stories. In essence, Herbie helped me to become a writer--because as writers we have to apply our imaginations to ordinary things and make them extraordinary.
Flopsy was no less of an inspiration to my daughter, who also wrote stories about the noble warrior-princess of the bunny kingdom (she'd read all of the Redwall books before her tenth birthday) who vanquished evil weasels and made the world safe for all harmless woodland creatures. And she helped my daughter become the gentle, imaginative young woman she is today--one who cares deeply for all things soft and furry (even the stupid cat) and has an affinity with nearly every animal she meets, be it a bunny, a dog, a horse, a llama, or a mouse.
Thank you Flopsy for ten years of nose-wiggling, carrot-munching, hippity-hopping entertainment. Thank you for helping to build my daughter. And since I'm pretty certain all bunnies, like all dogs, go to heaven, say hello to Herbie for me.
