When I was a kid I raised rabbits for 4-H. My dad built me a rabbit house and I had about twenty cages inside a tidy, little, bunny barn. Inside these cages, I raised meat rabbits. Yes, some people eat cute little bunnies, and for several years, I actually had my own business. It never did well, and to this day my brother still teases me about my imaginary “rabbit money.”
My brother was right. I don’t think I ever made a dime in my rabbit business, but I learned one very valuable lesson raising rabbits: the difference between a good doe and a bad one. A doe is a female rabbit. Bucks were boys.
Most of my rabbits were does. They produced the babies and babies is what I was after since I sold them as fryers (4-H is a brutal business). You only need one or two bucks in a rabbit house. I’m sure you’ve all heard the term, “breed like rabbits.” Well, the truth is, not all rabbits breed like rabbits.
After not doing well at the fair one year because my rabbits were judged too bony, I spent something like a hundred and fifty dollars (a fortune for a kid in those days) on two top of the line New Zealand rabbits, one buck and one doe. These New Zealands were sure to improve my breeding stock, I was told.
Well, the buck got right to work producing batches of bunnies, the problem was, the pricey doe wanted nothing to do with him. My old bony does put out litter after litter, especially one little black mother I came to greatly admire for her selflessness. She was nothing to look at like the gorgeous, new doe I’d paid a fortune for, because with each litter, Blackie pulled out all her chest and belly fur to make warm nests for her babies. Blackie was always skinny from tiredlessly nursing her bunnies and she loved taking care of the buck. When you dumped him in the cage with her, she went right to work grooming and wooing him. The new doe tried to kill the buck. Pretty soon, my top-of-the-line buck wanted nothing to do with my expensive doe. So much for rabbits breeding like rabbits.
Another buck, my old bony guy, was finally able to produce with this new doe, but she ate all her babies, leaving little hairless halves for me to find come morning. On the next successful breeding with Old Bony, this beautiful doe had her babies on the wire instead of in the nest. Of course they all died. Though this doe was my prettiest one (she groomed herself constantly and remained fat and sassy because she shared her cage, food, and body with no one) I came to despise her.
Being self-centered is an ugly quality, even in rabbits.
I sometimes think about these two very different rabbits while raising our daughters. Though our girls could have had their own bedrooms growing up, my husband and I encouraged them to stay in the same room so they would learn to share better. This year our daughters turn 18 and 20 years old, and they still sleep in side by side beds. Sometimes late at night I hear them giggling together. They are wonderfully close sisters. Four little brothers have come after them so the sisters certainly know how to share a cage, too. By God’s grace, I pray that our daughters become like the amazing Blackie rabbit.
Proverbs 31 in the Bible talks about the Wife of Noble Character. Above all, I believe a good wife is selfless. And in reading Genesis this week, I was struck again by why God made Eve in the first place: In Eden, the Lord saw that the man needed a helpmate. Women were created for men. Women today don’t like to hear this truth. Even Christian women don’t want to accept this teaching because we long to live life on our terms and society today says we should.
I am reading a great American novel right now about a “perfect” suburban housewife who ends up tearing lives apart by seeking freedom. Once this bright and shining wife and mother begins to free herself to pursue her long buried personal desires, all hell breaks loose in her nice little neighborhood. I’m only a quarter of the way through this big, highly acclaimed novel, but I find it striking that this unbelieving male author points out that there is no freedom in being free to live for oneself. This is a lie women believe. A lie that when pursued, does great detriment to our society, the author seems to be saying.
So back to a tale of two rabbits: I even recall the beautiful, but terrible doe’s name now, Rosy. I named her Rosy, 1. because she was a reddish color, and 2. because I thought she would bring me a rosy future in the rabbit business.
That’s the thing about pursuing our selfish desires, those desires at first appear rosy, but in the end, produce only thorns.