I once heard or read somewhere that a ridiculous amount of children receive pet bunnies as part of their Easter present. Sounds adorable, no? Bunnies are soft, cuddly, hoppy little creatures, ideal for a first pet.
That’s what I thought, too.
When I was in kindergarten, my parents agreed that I could get a pet. I decided that I wanted to get a bunny. I have vivid memories of going with my parents to a local pet store and picking out my favorite bunny: a gray and white (apparently I have an affinity for gray and white animals) bunny that I called Jelly Bean. Jelly Bean was supposed to be a mini-lop bunny — tiny, sweet and perfect for a miniature six-year-old.
Little did we know, Jelly Bean was not *actually* a mini-lop. Instead, Jelly Bean was an absolutely massive animal. We bought him an extra-large cage so he’d have room to play. After only a few months, Jelly Bean stretched the entire length of his cage. He was huge. We should have known that not only was he growing physically, but the evil inside of him was also expanding.
Early on, we knew that this rabbit was made of pure evil. My mom and I were a bit squirelly around him, and the first time we played with him while my dad was at work, we took him out to let him hop around the guest room. Jelly Bean started uh, leaving little “nuggets” if you will ALL OVER. Like, rapid fire style. Both my mom and I tried to wrangle him back into his cage with no success because he would not be contained. Finally, after trying over and over again, we called my dad AT WORK to make him come home and wrangle the best.
I know that sounds ridiculous.
IT WAS NOT.
That rabbit was the spawn of Satan. If I’d hold him, he would kick me with his back feet. He bit my dad and I on multiple occasions. Petting him or holding him was absolutely impossible, because he was completely terrible and horrible. Finally, we turned him loose in the backyard, where he tortured any animals that stumbled into our yard, lived under our deck and generally lived among nature, where he belonged.
My dad was the one assigned to the Keeping of Jelly Bean, mostly because he is the brave one. His favorite story to tell is of the day a cat tried to attack Jelly Bean as he sat in the grass, nibbling and doing bunny-like things. The cat apparently thought that Jelly Bean was a giant rat, and stalked him from up on our fence before jumping into our backyard. The cat came up behind Jelly Bean…and Jelly Bean laid the smack down. He kicked the crap out of that cat with his hind feet, making the poor cat scramble up the fence and get the heck out of our backyard.
Needless to say, Jelly Bean was not the best “first pet” experience. When he died a few years later, I shed approximately two years and then went outside to play, no longer afraid of my own backyard.
Whenever people mention that they’re considering a bunny for their child, I tell them to sleep with one eye open.
Have you ever had a truly evil pet?
Copyright © 2012
I suppose at least Jelly Bean had character! I liked the part about him scaring the cat off.
I’ve never had a pet myself, but I met an evil one once – one of my friends had a cat; I tried to be nice to it and stroke it and I felt like it was giving me evil looks. Like it was up to something. Within a few minutes my eyes started watering, I had to take out my contacts and one of my eyes had swelled up. I looked like Cyclops, and the cat looked smug. I’ve never had a bad reaction to a cat before so I’m convinced this was a witch cat.
Your bunny story is so sad! He had so much potential to be wonderful and then… he needed a wrangler. Although if I was a bunny I might be angry about it too.
I don’t know who these people are who get their kids bunnies for Easter! They seem to miss that they’re upping the ante to a level where all other easters will fall flat after this one year!
Bunnies are not really pet animals and it makes me sad that they’re marketed that way. They sure are cute, but they’re not really cuddly, take them out of the cage and play sorts of animals. They’re pesky, eat all the veggies in your garden sorts of animals. I’m sorry you were so terrorized by yours!
This is so funny to me because I just bought a guinea pig for my girls a few days ago and I told my friend at work and she was like, “why?”
So funny because we thought about a bunny! And glad we didn’t go there.
Sadie at heyMamas
OMG this story is TOO much. My brother had an evil iguana once, but I’ve always been pretty lucky with pets.
Oh my god, I so needed this post! I’ve been dying for a pet bunny lately — no idea why, just a random intense urge — and this post helped quell my bunny-mania!
We have tears in our eyes from laughter over this one. The best we can counter with is a Siamese cat from Hell, but he can’t even begin to touch Jelly Bean in the evil department.
We had bunnies growing up and they were big scratchers! Never bit, thankfully, but one of them killed her babies when she gave birth it was AWFUL.
I guess, for the most part, bunnies are just not lap pets.
I did know a bunny though (he belonged to some friends) who was the sweetest and most cuddly bunny you could ever imagine. He roamed freely in their apartment (and he was huge!) and pretty much behaved like a dog.
Okay I totally agree! My poor mom’s MIL (yes okay my grandma.. but I think posing it as my mom’s MIL sheds more light on the situation) bought me a bunny for Easter one year (I think I was like eight), much to my mom’s disagreement. But when my grandma walked in that day with a bunny, how was my mom going to tell me no? Knowing I was super lucky I got to keep him.. I named him Lucky. Well Lucky was not an easy pet since cleaning out the cage was a disaster… and my dog hated it.. and the hot Bakersfield summer was too much for him. Oh well. Bunnies are not so cute once they get past the cute baby bunny stage anyway.
I had an evil bunny too! I got him when I was about 10. I had grown up with big dogs who would happily roughhouse with me and let me pet them and hug them. I was totally unprepared for the biting, scratching, shitting nightmare that was a rabbit! I think the wind blew over his outdoor hutch one night and he ran away. I think everyone in my family was relieved.
This is a crazy story! I have a bunny and the kind of love I feel for her is so intense and ridiculous that I think that this is how it must be to be a mother. I leave her cage open all day and she hops into her litter box when she needs to go to the bathroom, then hops out and plays and hangs out with me whenever she can, and because I’m a vegetarian, we both eat pretty much the same stuff, and she jumps up into my lap and gives me little kisses on my nose, and SLEEPS NEXT TO ME IN MY BED. Yeah, I am smitten. Don’t let your poor experience with the evil bunny deter you! Bunnies (and all animals) are like human beings. Some are awesome. Some are annoying. Some need some coaxing. Some need hardcore therapy. We all need a little love. Today is cheesy day.
OMG, we totally had an evil bunny growing up too!! We actually had two (which were kept in separate hutches) at the same time. The evil one was a black dwarf, and would charge the edge of the cage growling if you came near. She used to get out sometimes, and when you caught her it was all scratches and bites. The other one was completely cute and sweet and used to give bunny kisses (licking your hand), so I guess it is the luck of the draw
Oh my.. we had the same thing. A bunny named Cricket. He bit my mom, and my the time i got home she’d given him to a FARMER. For years she kept up this ruse, and I even got letters from the farmer telling me cricket had a new happy family! Glad to hear I’m not the only one…
Um.
I have a cat named AXE MURDERER.
So.
Yeah.
I grew up around all sorts of animals, including rabbits. My worst experience though was with a hamster. I had hamsters all throughout my childhood and so had my husband. When we got our 1st place we decided we wanted to get a hamster, and deck it out. Except our hamster (female) was the devil. I had never had a vicious hamster (all male… btw) so we had no idea. One time when I tried to pick her up to transfer her to another cage she bit my thumb straight through my nail. Awful. Believe me, no tears were shed when that bitch finally died. She had bitten 3 people and when we cleaned her cage we would trap her with anything other then our hands. AWFUL.
I remember reading a children’s novel called Bunnicula about a vampire bunny. On the cover of the book was this terrifying illustration of a bunny with huge fangs and glowing red eyes. I suspect that at night, when you were all asleep this bunny you call Jelly Bean was sucking the blood of the small animals that lived in your neighbourhood just like Bunnicula in the book. Bunnies are evil creatures.
Oh my god that picture is scary!! Geez. I haven’t had an evil pet but a friend does. Seriously, that cat is EVIL. EVIL!!!
That is freaking hi-larious. Your story sounds a lot like my first pet. My step mom is a vet, and when I was 4 she brought home a raccoon that she was rehabilitating for some reason or another. Well, this thing did not like kids at all. Long story short, I have a phobia of raccoons. They will getcha! Aaah!
Hilarious story! I’ve actually heard how bad it is to buy bunnies as pets because they’re not all that cute/cuddly (or at least not all) and then there’s a run on homeless bunnies when families can’t keep them. Sad
I’m new here, but I had to chime in about bunnies. “Santa” once brought my brother some bunnies (without the permission of Mrs. Claus.) The first time the female had babies and then ATE THEM I lost any cutesy ideas about bunnies I may have had.
I have a bunny horror story too…I had an adorable little white bunny with black dalmatian-esque spots, who was not so evil until we realized the poor thing was in desperate need of orthodontia. I’m sure you know (probably due to Jelly Bean’s remarkable use of defense tactics) that rabbits just have the two teeth, that keep growing unless they gnaw them off. Well my poor bunny had crooked teeth and couldn’t get one of his ground off, so it would just keep growing, like an evil horn, up past his nose. My grandmother and I (the good old-fashioned country woman that she was) would have to clip this Tooth of Satan and the poor rabbit would wield that thing like a sword, not to mention the clawing and nugget-leaving he did. Oh, terrible bunnies.
Haha… your title has caused me to wander around with veggie-tales songs stuck in my head all day long.
Eeeww . . . That reminds me of my bunny that I adopted from my brother’s (at the time) girlfriend. He was the Monty Python rabbit. I swear! My dog even left him alone! He stayed with my (at the time) boyfriend when we moved and one day he got outside and never came back. I was none too upset about it. We kept him in a dog crate and he seemed happy in that . . . for the most part. Mom and Dad swear they see him children hopping around (they live out in the country).
That cat attack was a riot!
I think our cat would be happier if we disappeared and she had the house all to herself. But I still love her fiercely, because I’m dysfunctional like that.
I had a rabbit as a kid (that was also supposedly a mini-lop but grew waaayyy bigger than mini). He was actually pretty sweet, but not a very good pet – and a lot of work.
But my friend had a rabbit who was almost like a dog – so responsive and sweet and friendly – totally paper trained. Really amazing. I don’t know if it had to do with the type of rabbit or her family’s experience in having rabbits as pets. But regardless, getting a rabbit is not like getting a hamster, and any which way, pets shouldn’t be holiday gifts.
Oh my gosh, I knew when I saw that picture of the bunny this was going to be a hilarious post. I am dying!! LOL!!! The reason being, because I can remember vividly TWO evil pets that we had when I was younger. And we had a lot of different kinds of animals.
One was an evil Siamese cat. You would just be walking around & it would ATTACK you! Not just the playful little batting, it would grab your ankles and bite you, holding on! No joke!
The other was an English bulldog that my uncle, who was living with us at the time, bought as a puppy. This thing was seriously evil. I was even so scared to go out in the backyard and feed my guinea pigs because I knew he would hear me! If he saw you, he would bolt at you and BITE! And jump! And bite!! And I was like, 12!!!
Hahaha… this is fantastic. I mean, clearly traumatic, but, well. *giggle*
This was SO hilarious and I can’t believe I forgot to comment on it. The part about you shedding two tears… bahahaha!!
We had two bunnies back when we lived in Mississippi. I named mine Pete (umm, random choice for a 7 year old) and my little brother named his Petey because he was so original. They were both girls, so I’m not quite sure what our deal was there.
They weren’t that evil, but were absolutely IMPOSSIBLE to catch. I have a home movie of my dad chasing them around the backyard with a big cardboard box.
My parents’ cat Toby, on the other hand? Evil incarnate. He just sits and stares at me through the back door whenever I’m over there… strange thing is, he loves my daughter. He hates everyone but her.
This was a novel. Animals are creepy, the end.