by Melanie Wood

Created on: October 27, 2008   Last Updated: October 31, 2008

We were young marrieds living in San Francisco in 1970, and Fritz was a baby Dutch Bunny hopping around in a pet store window on Union Street. He was so tiny , so adorable I just had to go in to see...even though my husband warned me that we could have no dogs or cats per Mr. Piazza's lease. But I was certain there was no mention of little baby bun rabs.

We were $old that Dutch Bunnies were small, nocturnal, rodents, clean, quiet and affectionate pets. To prove affection, the salesman picked up baby Fritz and handed him to the most likely sucker, me. I cuddled Fritzy, and he nuzzled into my neck, just under my right ear, and awwww, he kissed me!

When we got home, we found Fritz certainly was not like the sluggish, dead beat rhodents in back-yard hutches I recalled from my childhood. According to Fritz, rabbits are creative, fun-loving, curious, affectionate and energetic. They are also myopic, but twitchy noses and wiggley ears make up for poor sight. We let Fritz explore the kitchen, bedroom and living room areas that afternoon. When we seated ourselves on the sofa, the tiny little fur-ball hopped up right in between us and promptly fell asleep. Love swelled in our hearts, filling our studio apartment!

Fritz became the ideal city pet: frisky, friendly, and very quiet. He ltaught us how to play rabbit tag: we chased him, then he turn around and chased us - all any one had to do was suddenly freeze in this game in order to "win". He learned that carrots were kept in the fridge, and that all he had to do was make a cracking-loud thump on the floor and he received a carrot. He greeted us each afternoon we returned from work, with a mad shaking of his cage when he heard the key turn in the lock. He was very affectionate when we held him, often reaching up to "kiss" our noses by licking the tip.

I used to "hypnotize" Fritz by laying him in my lap on his back, then very slowly moving my face toward him, touching nose to nose. He would go into a trance, laying still until it was broken by sudden movement or loud noise. This can be done with any rabbit. I still am unclear as to how or why this occurs in rabbits. Perhaps mother rabbits do this to her babies as she leaves the nest to go eat.

Being a rhodent, we found out, means gnawing a lot. I mean a whole lot of gnawing was going on in our apartment. Apparently they need to keep trimming their teeth and grind them down by the gnawing. Fritz pulled tufts out of an old carpet we had laid on the floor, so we pulled the whole

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