Funeral for Mr. Bonzo

I live on a farm with my wife and Beagle dog Ole’ Charley, and I feel as if I must relate this story to you to ease my conscience. It is a story of mixed emotions, for me and for the others involved….well, let me explain.

Living on a farm has its advantages. Mind you, I don’t live on a working farm; I don’t raise chickens or cows, I don’t slop the pigs or none of that, I just like the open landscape and the peacefulness. To add to the peacefulness, I only have one neighbor and although we rarely socialize, they are good neighbors. My neighbors, the Fletcher’s, consists of Bob, his wife Jenny and two girls, ages 5 and 6. Oh yeah, they also have a pet rabbit named Mr. Bonzo.  Now Mr. Bonzo is not your typical rabbit, no, Mr. Bonzo is very large, almost the same size as my Ole’ Charley. He was also very old, his grey hair beginning to turn white,

 My neighbors, especially the girls, really seemed to love that old rabbit. I  

would see them in the backyard playing with him, running with him and having such a good time with him. They even let him in the house on rainy days. The other times he was kept in a big cage built on stilts, and I often would see the girls lift him out of the cage and take him for walks. Yes, they really love that rabbit.

Now as far as Mr. Fletcher is concerned, I don’t see him very often, except when he and the family are barbequing in the back yard. When I see them I wave and they wave back, never really having more association than that, so to tell you the rest of the story is really a shock to them and to me.

It all began when I arrived home for work one late evening and my dog Ole’ Charley came walking out of the woods dragging something large and grey. At first I didn’t know what it was, perhaps a limb off a tree that fell during a recent storm or perhaps an old bicycle tire that was cast aside by someone who lived here before.

 I called for Charley to come closer, and when I finally saw what he was dragging, I nearly fainted…Ole’ Charley was dragging Mr. Bonzo by his hind leg.

I began screaming at him. “OH Charley, what have you done, how could you do such a thing….oh those girls are going to be so devastated, so hurt….why did you do such a thing Charley. Why???”

As I scolded Charley, he let go of Mr. Bonzo and with his tail between his legs, he walked past me toward the house.

“What am I going to do?” I thought to myself.

“Those girls are going to be so upset, I don’t want them to hate me…I don’t want them to try to get even with Ole’ Charley. What can I do?”

I sat for a while, trying to make sense of my dilemma, trying to find a solution to this horrible problem.

Finally I realized what I had to do. I had to clean Mr. Bonzo up real good and when it got dark and everyone was sleeping, I had to sneak over to my neighbor’s house and put Mr. Bonzo back in his cage. Maybe the Fletchers will think he died of old age and will not realize that Ole’ Charley was involved.  

It was my only chance to keep peace with my neighbors, I thought, and to give Ole’ Charley a second chance. I really didn’t blame Charley, after all, he was a hunting dog, and someone must have left the cage door open or left Mr. Bonzo out for Charley to be able to get to him.

I carried Mr. Bonzo into the house, noticing that he had a lot of dirt ground into him, from Charley dragging him, I assumed. I scrubbed him for a long time, until he was clean and used a blow drier to fluff up his hair. Ole’ Charley lay very still the whole time, looking at me as if to say, “why am I being punished?”

Late that night, I carried Mr. Bonzo across the large field to where his cage was. I laid him in the cage and positioned him like he was sleeping, and then returned home, exhausted yet happy that my Ole’ Charley would not be hated for following his natural instincts.

It was a week later before I saw my neighbors again as they were once more in the yard barbequing.  I had to find out if they suspected anything was amiss about their rabbit dying, so I walked a little closer and yelled out to Bob “ Hey neighbor, how’s it going?”

Bob looked up from the grille, “Oh, hey, how are you?”

Fine I shouted back. “So what’s new with you guys?” I asked, dying to know if he will mention Mr. Bonzo.

“Oh, everything is okay. The kids are still moaning the loss of our rabbit though. It’s been hard on them to understand what happened. In fact, I’m not sure myself.”

“That’s so sad to hear, so your rabbit died?”

“Yeah, he died about two weeks ago and we had a nice little funeral for him. We buried him in the backyard, said a little prayer, and tried to forget about it, but something very strange happened that we still can’t figure out why or who would do such a thing.”

“Oh, what was that?”

“Well we were all doing okay, even the kids, but last week some dirty son of a gun dug Mr. Bonzo up and put him back in his cage.”

The End