The Bunny

We went to the library so I could pick up my holds (oh, man, do I love the public library's hold system) and this guy was sitting in a chair with a tag around his neck that said "FREE TO GOOD HOME." I thought they were kidding, which meant my heart sank when Piper climbed up beside him, hugged him, and started chattering away as though they were long-lost friends. She carried him all around the library, talking to him. Sometimes she dropped him and went to do something else - play with a hedgehog puppet, take all the pieces out of a puzzle, bang away at the keyboard on one of their kid-size computers - but she always came back to him.


I was trying to figure out how to get him away from her when we wandered past the librarian's desk and the woman sitting there said, "Oh, good. She really likes him. We were hoping he'd go to a good home. I can see he'll be loved."
"What?" I said.
"She can take him with her. We get so many stuffed animals, we don't have room for them all, so we put a tag on him, "Free to good home." She can take him with her if she wants."
I stared at her. I think my mouth was open a little. "I thought you were kidding. I mean, I thought the tag was kidding, I thought he was just here for kids to play with."
She smiled. "No, we get a lot of donations, we can't keep it all, and we just don't have room for this guy."
I was still staring, but at least I remembered my manners. "Well...thank you," I sputtered. "Thank you very much."


While I went to check out our books, my husband scooped up Piper. He tried to prevent yet another stuffed animal from entering our house and was defeated both by her death-grip around the bunny's neck and by the same librarian's well-meaning insistence that it leave with us.

She has been best buddies with him - taking him to the store, carting him around and sharing her snacks, talking to him and positioning him beside her on the couch. We'll see how long it lasts, how long it is before he is tossed aside and consigned to the graveyard of stuffed things the toybox.