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The Beast died today.

Here’s a happy memory picture — El Grande hugging Beast when we visited La Petite in her college dorm room. Despite his fearsome appearance and size, Beast was the most mellow, relaxed, even laziest animal you could ever imagine. He was our first bunny. He had developed some health problems in the last several months with loss of muscle tone due to kidney malfunction, among others. At age 10 (what’s that in rabbit years? don’t know exactly) he was getting to the end of his life expectancy, so when he could not move his legs this morning, it was a signal that he was at the end.

Beast was friendly as can be. He liked everyone, and everyone liked him. We used to bring him upstairs at bedtime to snuggle with El Grande. Beast could also shed like a trooper; we called it “Power Shedding.” If I’d kept track of the number of lint brushes we wore out over this bunny….

He would eat almost anything we put in front of him. In fact, he managed to eat big leaves from the garden broccoli plants today, even while ill. What a treat! We have home video of Beast as a baby bunny eating a wild carrot with long, long greens and inhaling it like spaghetti. Now Tiny, his little bitty friend, won’t have to gobble to get his fill. He can actually save some carrots for later! Tiny is lonely tonight, so he is living temporarily in El Grande’s room. We’ll make sure he gets lots of attention from the humans to help him adjust to his new status.

Beast was La Petite’s first pet; she did the research and built the first cage with her dad’s help. She loves rabbits and is a very caring pet owner. Beast always knew he was loved. She even handled the dirty work of cleaning Beast when his muscle tone got too weak to keep himself rabbit-immaculate.

Beast is buried in the wild section of our garden, close to his old friend Cora. The little marker has been repaired at least once since we buried the first one; maybe the glue will hold this time. 🙂