A VERY MELLIPOP EASTER

Ok, so Easter was almost uneventful. I gave and received a fair few chocolate goodies. Eggs, bunnies, and a dusty box of "oh shit I forgot" chocolates from Anton (purchased from the servo down the road on Sunday arvo), who unfortunately missed the painfully brief post-January lead up to Easter Sunday in April. A man can be forgiven for only having had something like four scant months of easter egg buying opportunities in preparation for the day's festivities.

So we all got our seasonal treats in the end. Even the two demon dogs got their very own Easter Bunny this year.

Literally.

On the Monday night prior to easter weekend, they killed the next door neighbour's bunny rabbit.

Yes, killed. A bunny rabbit. Not just any bunny rabbit, but the beloved pet of the two young boys who live next door.

So Monday night was shaping up to be just like any other Monday night. Dinner was cooked and eaten, and we were sitting down to enjoy my favourite weeknightly half hour of self-righteous voyeurism - The Biggest Loser - when we heard small squeaking noises from out in the backyard. This is not in any way unusual. Now that Anton works for the biggest pet supply distributor in the country, we have come into possession of just about every freakin' squeakin' dog toy known to man and beast.

So hearing these few barely audible squeaking sounds in the backyard, at no point did it ever occur to me that it may in fact be the sound of our two dogs devouring a small mammal. So I stayed glued to The Biggest Loser. Anton thought otherwise, and went to check on the demon dogs.

He was shocked to discover that the Easter Bunny had come early to our house this year. The poor little tacker was in a very bad way, still alive but breathing rapidly, and deep in a state of shock. An immediate examination revealed that there was no blood, and no scratches, bites, injuries or wounds of any kind. Just a heavily traumatised bunny rabbit and two over-excited staffies who didn’t quite know what to do with it. Thank God they hadn't mauled or bitten the poor thing, though I can't help but wonder what might have happened if Anton hadn't gone outside straight away. I was definitely thanking God that it hadn't all happened on Tuesday, as my "good in a crisis" beloved was booked to stay overnight in Port Macquarie on business...

As soon as we moved in we’d anticipated that there may be an issue with the rabbit. It was left free to roam the complex that we live in, and was rarely if ever properly caged. With this in mind, we’d placed pavers all around the perimeter of our shared fence, to prevent any parties digging under the fence from either side. But rabbits are skinny. And stupid, it would appear. The bunny had dug a hole and squeezed through a two-inch gap between pavers, finding itself in our backyard. And subsequently finding itself with two new rambunctious playmates about ten times its size.

So Anton went straight over to the neighbours house, and she came over to claim the bunny, which unfortunately died later that night. I’m no forensics expert, but it would appear that the bunny, having been cornered at our side gate, literally died of shock and fright. Our neighbour was incredibly apologetic, as she had removed barriers from her side of the fence, thinking that the rabbit couldn’t possibly have been stupid enough to try and gain access into a backyard containing two dogs. In subsequent light of the bunnies death, we offered to get the boys a new bunny rabbit, an offer which was kindly refused by our neighbour.

So these poor little boys lost their pet bunny at Easter. Their mum didn’t tell them that the bunny had died, but that it had gone away to “live somewhere else”. I’m not going to try and make any of this funny, because it’s not.

There we have it. My stupid, hypo dogs have now graduated from petty theft and malicious damage to manslaughter.