“Hallo, Rabbit,” he said, “is that you?”

“Let’s pretend it isn’t,” said Rabbit, “and see what happens.” — A. A. Milne

Perhaps a little early for Easter, but relevant all the same, this is a tale about a rabbit. Several rabbits, in fact, who were pretending not to be rabbits and, in the process, eluded the neighborhood from attempted capture.

It all started with a benign search for a home. My client was currently living in a fishbowl. This descriptive term was adopted after living in her home for less than a month before learning that her neighbors not only enjoyed all-hours skinny dipping in their above-ground pool, of which she had full view, but also that these same neighbors, as well as everyone else surrounding her, had full view of her every move once she opened her back door.

Although her backyard neighbors with the pool clearly didn’t mind the audience, my client did. Hence, after enduring several years in the proverbial aquatic museum, she decided to move. After several months of searching, we found the perfect spot: a home in a rural area backing up to several acres of vacant marshland and high privacy fences. The house wasn’t exactly what she wanted, but it was all cosmetic stuff that could be changed. The location could not. We closed on both homes, and she moved in and unpacked.

Less than two weeks later, I received a text from her, “Can you tell the seller’s agent that his client forgot to take his rabbits? They are hopping around everywhere, and they seem to be multiplying like…well…rabbits.”

While I couldn’t understand why anyone wouldn’t want a bunch of adorable baby bunnies hopping around their backyard, I also knew that she was a big fan of gardens and I learned from my earlier readings of the tale of Peter Rabbit that rabbits love gardens, but gardens don’t reciprocate the love, nor do gardeners.

After a discussion on the matter with the previous seller’s agent on the home, I learned the rabbits technically belonged to the next-door neighbor who had actually occupied the home my client now lived in before she moved in. He was the seller’s ex-boyfriend but stayed in the home after she moved out. He had simply moved next door after the home sold. The bunnies were just going back to their old stomping grounds. One could hardly blame them. Bunnies will do what bunnies do.

The agent stated it this way, “Yeah, funny thing. Those rabbits are wild. Nobody can catch them. The whole neighborhood just decided to embrace the colony of rabbits (also referred to by the scientific term “fluffle” when they are bunnies), feed them and treat them as the neighborhood pets while they watch them multiply. Even the neighborhood dogs have seemed to warm up to the fact that these guys aren’t going anywhere. Rather than chase them, since they can’t be caught, they just seem to let them go about their business.” Whatever business rabbits have to go about.

I returned to my client with this less-than-helpful report. “Sounds like the bunnies are planning a coup d’état. Good news, though — it is likely nonlethal, agitated by the Energizer Bunny, placing all conscientious objectors under house arrest. But I have to warn you, those not willing to cooperate will likely be cited for insurrection and may face the big pointy teeth of the killer rabbit of Caerbannog, which will mark the first executed of its type since the mafia-era St. Valentine’s Day Massacre ordered by Al Capone in Chicago in 1929, a precursor to the stock market crash.”

“Well, in that case,” she responded, “perhaps I can be the chancellor. If I can’t fight ’em, I may as well join ’em.”

In conclusion, I quote A.A. Milne from “The House at Pooh Corner”: “‘Owl,’ said Rabbit shortly, ‘you and I have brains. The others have fluff. If there is any thinking to be done in this Forest–and when I say thinking I mean thinking–you and I must do it.'”

Jen Fischer is an associate broker and Realtor. She can be reached at 801-645-2134 or jen@jen-fischer.com.

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