My rabbit Flora

When i was young, my parents often took my younger brother and I on road trips to different cities in our country, in order to teach us of the stories, legends and history of our culture.

One of these days, when i was 9 years old and it was snowing a little, while we were driving, my brother and I noticed some teenager boys selling baby rabbits on the side of the road, most likely they had stolen them from the forest near by, as at the time it was birthing season - that’s what our parents used to say in order to convince us that is useless to buy house pets, when we could find them on our own (they never let us keep pets even when we found them).

That day i thought that if i pleaded more maybe they would stop the car and buy a rabbit for us.

It was our lucky day because our parents let us take home not only one, but two rabbits. Mine was a female with white furr and red eyes. Later i found out that she was a wild rabbit, supposedly of that one breed that went mad (that is what my parents told us when they ‘disappeared’ unexpectedly months later after we bought them).

My brother’s rabbit was also a female, but her furr was white mixed with a light brown almost orange and with black eyes.

We were thrilled to have them; we showed them to all of our friends, we would play hide and seek with them, we took them on walks and we feed them with food we researched on textbooks for rabbits.

I named my rabbit Flora, it took a couple of days to decide for the name, because at the time felt as if nothing fit her well enough.

I brought my rabbit everywhere i went, except for school, not as if I didn’t want to but my mother never allowed me too.

What i feel that i will always cherish is how i used to put Flora under my jumper and she would climb from under there and stick out her neck, through the head hole, dig her nails to the jumper in order not to fall. Like that i used to go everywhere; the amounts of time that she had peed on my shirts like that are uncountable and i still used to put her under my shirt every possible time.

People nowadays are used to the idea of house pets being compared to having children, and saying that these two choices are the same. I see this as a totally wrong comparison.

The difference between these is the love; it is different. The love we have for children changes as they grow, we may love them more, we may love them less, or love them conditioned for reasons that always end up to be selfish.

The love for an animal, an house pet is different: animals don’t speak, don’t communicate, we expect nothing from and we give everything. We love them unconditionally, there we learn of the love without worries, doubts, intentions and all that. To love an animal is something not every human can achieve, because that living being cannot give us anything else but love - and this is not something everyone wants for themselves.

Having Flora made me realize that, and only years later i can put it into words. My rabbit Flora taught me of the love we choose to give without wanting anything in return. Selflessly loving a being that does not speak and does not understand us, and we love them just because they exist.