Towards a better, floofier world
June 21, 2023 8:56 PM Subscribe
Why rabbits? Noah Smith on keeping rabbits as pets.
People often ask me: “Why rabbits?” Usually my answer is just “They’re floofy.” And that is a perfectly fine and good answer. Rabbits are indeed floofy, and they’re also playful and affectionate and funny.
Our neighborhood is overrun with rabbits. Cute little hoppy fucks.
One of my dogs is obsessed when she sees them across the cul-de-sac in the neighbor's yard.
One of my dogs it totally freaked out by them, and will lose her mind when she sees them when on a walk. And in a totally scared way.
And they are as floofy as they are hoppy.
posted by Windopaene at 10:01 PM on June 21, 2023 [3 favorites]
One of my dogs is obsessed when she sees them across the cul-de-sac in the neighbor's yard.
One of my dogs it totally freaked out by them, and will lose her mind when she sees them when on a walk. And in a totally scared way.
And they are as floofy as they are hoppy.
posted by Windopaene at 10:01 PM on June 21, 2023 [3 favorites]
I had rabbits growing up. I don't think it's a good idea to have one these days in a small apartment with a ton of yarn and very weird cord situations, but they are cute as the dickens.
I note I am on a "Bunnies are Arseholes" membership that is HILARIOUS. You would not expect bunnies to get up to the shit that they can do.
I wanted to take the world’s most abject creature and exalt it to as high a level as I could. I wanted to invert every hierarchy of power and violence that the natural world and the human world had created. I wanted to turn a hamburger into a princess.
AWWWWWWWWWWWWWW.
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:09 PM on June 21, 2023 [7 favorites]
I note I am on a "Bunnies are Arseholes" membership that is HILARIOUS. You would not expect bunnies to get up to the shit that they can do.
I wanted to take the world’s most abject creature and exalt it to as high a level as I could. I wanted to invert every hierarchy of power and violence that the natural world and the human world had created. I wanted to turn a hamburger into a princess.
AWWWWWWWWWWWWWW.
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:09 PM on June 21, 2023 [7 favorites]
who brought the tribbles onto the u.s.s. metafilter
posted by not_on_display at 11:42 PM on June 21, 2023 [13 favorites]
posted by not_on_display at 11:42 PM on June 21, 2023 [13 favorites]
Some bloke calls himself Harry Mudd.
posted by JHarris at 12:56 AM on June 22, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by JHarris at 12:56 AM on June 22, 2023 [2 favorites]
My neighbours once had their rabbit and their cat out on the lawn. Suddenly the cat pounced on the rabbit, OMG! Having established its position as dominant predator it let the rabbit go. But the rabbit then kept lolloping up and bumping the cat with its floofy shoulder as if to say ‘C’mon! Chase me again!’ I’ve never seen a cat look so embarrassed.
posted by Phanx at 12:59 AM on June 22, 2023 [20 favorites]
posted by Phanx at 12:59 AM on June 22, 2023 [20 favorites]
I looked it up: "damn" and "rabbit" are actually two separate words. Who knew?
As one who has had to live with these (ok, cute) critters, I advise you to secure all electric cords and watch your step.
Snuggle up, people
posted by skippyhacker at 4:36 AM on June 22, 2023 [6 favorites]
As one who has had to live with these (ok, cute) critters, I advise you to secure all electric cords and watch your step.
Snuggle up, people
posted by skippyhacker at 4:36 AM on June 22, 2023 [6 favorites]
Thank you for posting this, russilwvong. I hadn't encountered it, and I don't know if I would have... but it's not impossible. I have two companion animals, both rabbits, and so people tend to send me rabbit things. The experiences described in the essay align with my own, from the almost inevitable sophistication of moral thinking to the reality of living with buns.
In the U.S., animals are food, pets, or obstacles, and for "pets," you've got basically dog people, cat people, or weird people. I could joke about always having been weird, but my experience has been that having animal companions who are neither of the "big two" are a distinctive, unambiguous marker. You have chosen something not normal that cannot, if you are going to respect your animal companions' lifespans and well being, change like you can change a superficial aspect of your self. People will talk with you, analyze you, think about you in markedly different ways, for all that "exotic pets" are quite common.
The book Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat: Why It's So Hard to Think Straight About Animals really hit home when I read it, because it captures many of the paradoxes of human encounters with animals. Folks tend not to eat dogs or cats, so that question is never there, but when you have rabbits in your life, as the essay points out, you think about Smith's "hamburger" question a lot. People are forever asking me questions about rabbit lifespans, typically being stunned to learn that 10 years is hardly unusual, and it's led to many conversations about the morality of keeping pets, how humans use animals, and what human lives would be like without clothing or shelter.
To emphasize how my perspectives on empathy, autonomy, and care have shifted would be slightly misleading, because I was always to some extent a big ol' softie... but my thinking has shifted. To take one instance, while I'm not an anti-car activist (I live in a car-dependent location), I no longer think of roadkill as something that simply happens, let alone ignoring it entirely. Humans have established dominion over spaces and casually killed anything that gets in their way, which isn't a uniquely human thing, given how many animals fill or overrun their ecological niches, but the low opinion many people have and share with me about the value of the lives of rabbits and other lagomorphs is thought-provoking. And, of course, rabbits are notorious for their fruitfulness and will ravage landscapes (hello, Australia! hello, my garden!).
I think we should build a world that provides refuge and shelter for all, including such things as wildlife bridges. It may be that those things make humans safer, and I do think that is good, but I think it should be enough that it makes the lives of other animals in this world safer. That alone should warrant the investment of time and resources. This extends to how I think about climate change; I now often, not particularly intentionally, think more seriously about how it will affect non-human persons than I do humans. (Another concept I didn't even ponder--"non-human persons"--before rabbits entered my home life.)
The Thucydides question that Smith raises aligns with things I thought long ago (I was and remain a Classics student), but having prey-designated social animals as your constant companions makes you think. My car comments aside, I tend to think about humans now more thoroughly in the context of all animals, not as "the animal that has others as pets," but "one of many," and so I think more about the needs of all animals, even as I cannot--should not--look out for or help every animal. Who should live and who should die? Like many MeFites, my thinking has been shaped by what I've read (hello, Gandalf's thinking about Gollum!), but having constant companions whose lives are now many times what they would have been outside, I'm compelled to ask who else should live or die at what cost, be they bun or billionaire. I am a sentimental person, but my thinking about the value of life has expanded. I'm not yet a vegetarian, for any number of reasons, but my diet has shifted away from cruelty as much as possible. Even as I've done that, I acknowledge that my specific level of cognition leads me in that direction, and that such thinking may itself be unnatural--because "cruelty" is also quite natural, to judge from how rabbits and other animals behave toward one another.
posted by cupcakeninja at 4:41 AM on June 22, 2023 [9 favorites]
In the U.S., animals are food, pets, or obstacles, and for "pets," you've got basically dog people, cat people, or weird people. I could joke about always having been weird, but my experience has been that having animal companions who are neither of the "big two" are a distinctive, unambiguous marker. You have chosen something not normal that cannot, if you are going to respect your animal companions' lifespans and well being, change like you can change a superficial aspect of your self. People will talk with you, analyze you, think about you in markedly different ways, for all that "exotic pets" are quite common.
The book Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat: Why It's So Hard to Think Straight About Animals really hit home when I read it, because it captures many of the paradoxes of human encounters with animals. Folks tend not to eat dogs or cats, so that question is never there, but when you have rabbits in your life, as the essay points out, you think about Smith's "hamburger" question a lot. People are forever asking me questions about rabbit lifespans, typically being stunned to learn that 10 years is hardly unusual, and it's led to many conversations about the morality of keeping pets, how humans use animals, and what human lives would be like without clothing or shelter.
To emphasize how my perspectives on empathy, autonomy, and care have shifted would be slightly misleading, because I was always to some extent a big ol' softie... but my thinking has shifted. To take one instance, while I'm not an anti-car activist (I live in a car-dependent location), I no longer think of roadkill as something that simply happens, let alone ignoring it entirely. Humans have established dominion over spaces and casually killed anything that gets in their way, which isn't a uniquely human thing, given how many animals fill or overrun their ecological niches, but the low opinion many people have and share with me about the value of the lives of rabbits and other lagomorphs is thought-provoking. And, of course, rabbits are notorious for their fruitfulness and will ravage landscapes (hello, Australia! hello, my garden!).
I think we should build a world that provides refuge and shelter for all, including such things as wildlife bridges. It may be that those things make humans safer, and I do think that is good, but I think it should be enough that it makes the lives of other animals in this world safer. That alone should warrant the investment of time and resources. This extends to how I think about climate change; I now often, not particularly intentionally, think more seriously about how it will affect non-human persons than I do humans. (Another concept I didn't even ponder--"non-human persons"--before rabbits entered my home life.)
The Thucydides question that Smith raises aligns with things I thought long ago (I was and remain a Classics student), but having prey-designated social animals as your constant companions makes you think. My car comments aside, I tend to think about humans now more thoroughly in the context of all animals, not as "the animal that has others as pets," but "one of many," and so I think more about the needs of all animals, even as I cannot--should not--look out for or help every animal. Who should live and who should die? Like many MeFites, my thinking has been shaped by what I've read (hello, Gandalf's thinking about Gollum!), but having constant companions whose lives are now many times what they would have been outside, I'm compelled to ask who else should live or die at what cost, be they bun or billionaire. I am a sentimental person, but my thinking about the value of life has expanded. I'm not yet a vegetarian, for any number of reasons, but my diet has shifted away from cruelty as much as possible. Even as I've done that, I acknowledge that my specific level of cognition leads me in that direction, and that such thinking may itself be unnatural--because "cruelty" is also quite natural, to judge from how rabbits and other animals behave toward one another.
posted by cupcakeninja at 4:41 AM on June 22, 2023 [9 favorites]
We lost our last two bunnies to cancer, both of them spent nearly 12 years with us. They were like night and day, personality-wise, but we loved them both like a family member, which of course they were. They were our last two after almost 40 years of having rabbits in the house. Like most of the rabbits we had they were rescues.
The reasons why they were our last are complex, but it comes down to my wife's worsening allergies and the emotional toll it takes on me when they die.
The house still feels empty to me.
posted by tommasz at 6:37 AM on June 22, 2023 [9 favorites]
The reasons why they were our last are complex, but it comes down to my wife's worsening allergies and the emotional toll it takes on me when they die.
The house still feels empty to me.
posted by tommasz at 6:37 AM on June 22, 2023 [9 favorites]
This is a wonderful essay for a number of reasons, but I particularly like it because its clarity helped me articulate why I disagree: it's not that the strong shouldn't help the weak, per se, but that if you're taking strength and weakness as given you are starting from a position of charity and not the much more fundamental idea that power can change. Through collective action, and struggle, and randomness, or through abuse and exploitation, etc. And yes, maybe once in a blue moon through the charity of the powerful.
The rabbit example is great as far as it goes, but if we apply it generally, to human beings with agency, it naturalizes inequality and power differentials. To be fair to Noah, he supports many of the structural ways of "standing against this flow" that I would. But I do think what you focus on matters.
posted by ropeladder at 6:49 AM on June 22, 2023 [3 favorites]
The rabbit example is great as far as it goes, but if we apply it generally, to human beings with agency, it naturalizes inequality and power differentials. To be fair to Noah, he supports many of the structural ways of "standing against this flow" that I would. But I do think what you focus on matters.
posted by ropeladder at 6:49 AM on June 22, 2023 [3 favorites]
I had a friend who had a rabbit that would growl (and not in adorable way: in a "I will cut you" way) and also poop directly into her handbag
posted by scruss at 7:46 AM on June 22, 2023 [8 favorites]
posted by scruss at 7:46 AM on June 22, 2023 [8 favorites]
We have a friend with both a pet rabbit and a cat. They have a happy, symbiotic relationship: the cat thinks he's in charge because he grooms the rabbit, and the rabbit thinks he's in charge because the cat grooms him.
posted by Orange Dinosaur Slide at 8:26 AM on June 22, 2023 [18 favorites]
posted by Orange Dinosaur Slide at 8:26 AM on June 22, 2023 [18 favorites]
I had a friend who had a rabbit that would growl (and not in adorable way: in a "I will cut you" way) and also poop directly into her handbag
I had a pet rabbit like that, it would growl and scratch = that thing was a miserable cuss, and I eventually released it on my grandparent's farm.
posted by The_Vegetables at 11:15 AM on June 22, 2023 [1 favorite]
I had a pet rabbit like that, it would growl and scratch = that thing was a miserable cuss, and I eventually released it on my grandparent's farm.
posted by The_Vegetables at 11:15 AM on June 22, 2023 [1 favorite]
Why not rabbits?
posted by rabbitrabbit
Exactly what I would expect someone shilling for Big Rabbit to say.
posted by sockshaveholes at 11:23 AM on June 22, 2023 [10 favorites]
posted by rabbitrabbit
Exactly what I would expect someone shilling for Big Rabbit to say.
posted by sockshaveholes at 11:23 AM on June 22, 2023 [10 favorites]
... how big?
posted by seanmpuckett at 11:32 AM on June 22, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by seanmpuckett at 11:32 AM on June 22, 2023 [5 favorites]
It goes all the way to the top.
posted by Orange Dinosaur Slide at 7:34 PM on June 22, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by Orange Dinosaur Slide at 7:34 PM on June 22, 2023 [1 favorite]
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