It was a very sunny and warm day when I finally arrived with all my stuff to the Comité Directeur’s house in Brussels, the place where I was going to live for one year. It was the beginning of an unforgettable experience, there was no doubt about that. But when I moved in there were two little inhabitants of the house that were going to stay there for a long time and certainly contribute to making the life in the house a little bit more exciting. This will be a story of the rabbit inhabitants of the Comité Directeur’s garden.
When I was moving into the house, I found two grey rabbits sitting in the garden and looking a little confused. It had just been few days when a major garden-cleaning action had been carried out in the house and that was so efficient that basically no grass was left in the garden. But soon new grass would grow and start an entirely new part of life for these two rabbits. However, let’s move first to the beginning of the story, just a few months earlier around Easter time.
Friends in the garden
Agnes Leyrer and Olga Basova, previous CD members had one day the feeling of celebrating Easter in Brussels, in the house. What is closely connected to these holidays? Certainly rabbits. In this way, a quick and fun decision caused two little grey rabbits moving into the house. Nico Huurman assembled a wooden cage for them and soon they started their new AEGEE life partly in the kitchen, partly in the garden. But as days were getting warmer, our CD members noticed that rabbits were animals after all and did belong to the nature. So “Flatfy” and “Zugie”, as they were called initially, just moved into the garden for good and soon started living real rabbit-like lifes including digging holes and… but let’s move back to September 2011.
Our two new grey and hairy friends found a little place in my heart, especially because I had promised in front of the entire Spring Agora Leiden that I would take care of them. Fortunately, the time in which they had to live on pure soil without grass was over and the rabbits could enjoy fresh green grass very soon!
Miracles of nature
One sunny day in September when we had nice guests from Poland, the guy came to our kitchen and asked with a weird look on his face: “But… do you know that you have baby rabbits?” I just thought that there must be some funny confusion, as we were supposed to have two female long-eared! But the curiosity won and I quickly run into the garden to see three tiny baby rabbits sitting in front of the rabbit-house entrance: one black, one white and one grey. “Holy mother earth! This is a miracle!” Apparently the rumours about our friends having a lesbian love affair were true, just that it was not exactly lesbian.
From this moment on we had an entire rabbit-family living with us. But unfortunately, not everyone was friends with them, as some of the CD members were rather stating that the rabbits would look way better in a pot in a form of gulash. But they had also good protectors acting as their life insurance.
Carrots, I love them
Months were passing by and the little rabbits were eating, growing and eating. Autumn arrived and days were getting colder. The grass was less green and I started to support the family with bags of carrots. I had seen that many times in cartoons that they f****** love them, but I would not have expected that it was even more true in reality! Watching 5 rabbits eating one carrot while there are 20 around was indeed a funny view.
Hard winter
The winter came and December turned out to be the coldest month of the year. It was dark, cold and very snowy. Definitely times changed for the happy rabbit family and the tough part of living a rabbit-life began. Indeed, they were tough and could sit around for hours in the snow, but food was rare and we were supplying them with more carrots, salad leftovers and whatever we could spare (food is also rare for CD members). Finally, Christmas time arrived and basically everyone went for two weeks holidays.
After coming back I could see only one member of the furry family around. I started being worried about them and soon I found the lifeless body of our little white fellow. It was a very sad view. This one was albino, always a bit weaker and smaller than the others. But during the next days also the rest of the family did not appear. What had happened? Their bodies have never been found. While on the other hand, the remaining rabbit was pretty well of, did not seem to be sick, neither hungry. What had exactly happened there? Why did the other disappear? These questions unfortunately could never be answered.
In the next weeks the lonely rabbit was visibly sad, which is more than understandable. But as time was passing by, it was also curing his sorrow and the grey one started adapting to his new life. But soon he was supposed to meet a new rather untypical friend.
A new beginning and a new friend
The neighbour’s cat had been creeping around our garden already for some time. Obviously, the rabbit’s presence cought its attention and during each pass he was just measuring the rabbit with a suspicious look. But the grey friend was not scared. We could just assume that he was simply not aware of the dangers that the predator was bringing. Rather than being scared, the rabbit was bravely running towards the cat and simply scaring it away. We were following this theatre with great interest. However, after several weeks both involved parties started to develop some trust towards each other and the simple curiosity transformed into a deep friendship. From now on it was a frequent look to see the new and rather untypical couple to sit around in the garden, chase each other around and apparently having a great time together.
Then it was already one year since I moved into the house and it was time to move out. We all said goodbye to the little friend and our successors moved in. The next winter was not that harsh and the rabbit was certainly not expecting that just in a couple of months his life would change again. In springtime a new little inhabitant moved in: another rabbit! The CD decided to adopt him from a friend’s friend and the two soon started a new life together.
I could not follow it up myself, but stories have been said that after some initial misunderstanding the ice between the two was broken and now they are living together as best friends. There have been rumours that this even caused them to develop more trust towards the representatives of the human species and now it is even possible to touch both of them.
There is just one way to find out whether these rumours are true – visit the house and inspect the garden yourself.
Written by Michael Makowiecki, AEGEE-Hamburg
Photos: Michael Makowiecki, AEGEE-Hamburg