The wondrous story of my rabbit Pluk
Aug 22, 2019
For years my two rabbits called Zaza and Pluk -which I rescued from a animal shelter- lived quite happily in my garden. The male's name 'Pluk' -which actually means 'punky' in Dutch- was given to him by the animal shelter because his fur was so ravaged from all the fighting he did with one of the other rabbits in the shelter. So when I first put him together with Zaza in their new hutch, they fought really bad. Luckily after a while their fighting stopped and they became a loving and inseparable couple. Pluk had quite a character as he turned out to be quite an great escape artist over the years that followed. Once, after a heroic escape into the neighbors garden two doors down, he eventually came back and waited for us to open the door to his hutch to unite him with his great love Zaza.
In November 2015 both Zaza and Pluk had reached quite an old age and had developed health issues. They were both taken to the vet, but unfortunately Zaza didn’t make it due to cancer and Pluk needed urgent surgery on his teeth. The vet also warned me that Pluk would not survive the winter in the cold garden and should be taken indoors if I wanted Pluk to recover from the surgery. Upon hearing that, I decided to help him through his recovery at home.
When he came home after surgery, I could clearly tell he wasn’t the happy rabbit I had know for all those years. I even had serious doubts if he would survive indoors. Being in such bad shape he was letting me cuddle him much more than he used to and I could gently spoon-feed him mashed carrots. He sometimes hopped around freely in my living room, which he seemed to enjoy, but he didn’t eat by himself. In all he was not getting any better, so one day I put him on my lap, cuddled him and decided to give him a good talking to: I said: “Pluk, you are still not eating unless I spoon-feed you. As a result you are not getting any better so the way I see it you have options left: you either stop eating all together and will be reunited with your beloved Zaza in heaven soon, or you give your life a second chance indoors with me in my new house, and start eating again”. Then I put him back in his cage and went about my daily business. After about 10-15 minutes I walked into my living room again and to my amazement I saw that Pluk was eating quite happily by himself, apparently he made his choice...
From that moment on began our new life together with Pluk hopping around my living room whenever I was home and could keep an eye on him. And since -as an artist and illustrator- I work from home, that was quite a lot. My friend Willem enjoyed Pluk just as much as I did. We had a terrible time protecting all our wiring from the sudden urges of Pluk and sometimes it seemed impossible. Pluk ate wiring like candy. My lamps, my TV, my vacuum cleaner, my leather bag, my expensive boots, even pillows… you name it, Pluk tried to eat it. I looked like everything had Pluk’s teeth-marks on it. When I was angry with him and put him back in his cage, he became just as angry with me. But having him around had it’s blessings as well. Sometimes he would fall asleep on the floor and he would snore like a grownup man. He would climb the cough and fall asleep next to us. He even made friends with the head of an artificial polar bear carpet - and more then once I would walk into the living room finding him asleep cuddling his new artificial best friend. All in all he was a he joy to have around the house and I enjoyed watching him every day.
The following summer I decided to buy Pluk a new big rabbit hutch and try keep him outside again. We placed it under a beautiful big Japanese blossoming tree and Willem extended his hutch with a big outside play area covered with a net to protect Pluk from the occasional birds of pray that would fly over our garden.
Then in November 2016, Pluk’s teeth were really bad again. I decided to give it one last chance to have his teeth being checked at the Vet. Then, still dopey, he fell from his cage and broke his paw. I felt terrible. The Vet advised to put him to sleep as he was old, didn’t eat, weight almost nothing and on top of it all she told me his paw could not be fixed. With pain in my heart I decided I would do that, but not that same day as I wanted my daughter to say goodbye to him. I made an appointment so I had some more time to spend with him and since I was so sad. I didn’t really want to put him asleep, but Pluk -who was in a really good mood- still wouldn’t eat.
What happened next would turn out to be nothing but a small wondrous miracle: as I was preparing to take Pluk to the vet, about 15 minutes for departure, I heard Willem -who had been painting doors- screaming as he had torn a muscle in his back. He was in so much pain I decided to cancel the vet and call a doctor for Willem instead.The next morning I arrived at Pluk's cage and found him eating quite happily as if nothing had happened. I called the vet, told her what had happened, so she prescribed some extra painkillers for Pluk's paw and advised me to see what happened over the next days. To everybody's surprise Pluk started eating again, gaining weight and finding new innovative ways to walk around on 3 paws. To me this had been nothing more than a divine intervention, but Pluk didn’t seemed to be bothered by his brush with death at all.
In the summer of 2017 however Pluk was in a different mood: his teeth problems were back again. He became skinnier by the day and he became incredibly fragile, so fragile that another paw had broken (as I later understood this had been caused by severe osteoporosis). This time his eyes told me he had enough and it was time for him to go. Although I knew it was a good thing to do, I found it sad. After he had been put to sleep, we took him to my parents house, next to a lovely park where I wanted to bury him. My parents were on holiday and the house was empty and quiet. Then, all of a sudden the CD player started to play by itself. I looked at Willem and he looked at me as we had cold shivers. Was this truly happening? As the radio started to play in the middle of the song, Brian Adams sang ‘when your lying here in my arms, I am finding it hard to believe, were in heaven…’ It as a moment that I will never forget and knew we had made the right decision.
With a relieved heart we found a nice spot in the park were we buried Pluk.
You may think that this is here the story ends. However that same summer I noticed I really missed Pluk running around my living room and discovered I was still grieving about the loss of my colorful rabbit-companion. So I decided to write down his wondrous story to see if I could get some closure. At the same time I was starting to work as an illustrator with Guidepost Magazine USA for a magazine called 'All Creatures'. To get myself familiarized with the magazine, I had been reading lots of their articles about special encounters with animals and decided to see what would happen if I would send them my article about Pluk. To my surprise they were not only touched by his story, but the magazine decided to place a summary of this story in a section about remarkable obituaries of animals, called 'last moments'. I was also asked to paint illustrations for those stories and have been ever since. Eactly one year after his passing, the magazine published Pluk's story and the idea of people all around the United States reading this story, felt like an ultimate tribute to Pluk.
