Bunnichiladas

Bunny rabbits. Don't you just love them?

When my dad told us we'd be adding rabbits to our animal collection, I was thrilled. These cute little guys are so cuddly, so lovable, so peaceful. I have fond memories of peering into our (once again) home made rabbit hutches and seeing that a rabbit had given birth to as many as fifteen little bunnies. They were so adorable! My sister, Katrine, had one white bunny to begin with that she had a hard time naming. After quickly choosing "Luv-Luv" and discarding it almost as quickly (after my mocking) she settled on the name, "Cynthia." I let this one slide, mostly because I was too excited about my rabbit that I immediately named, "Dr. Pepper."
Well, these bunnies multiplied like rabbits. We were building hutch after hutch, but still there wasn't enough room to contain them all. In hindsight, separating the males from the females probably would have been the most effective way of taming our bunny population, but instead, my dad took to butchering them.

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One morning I was taking out the trash (this must have been after we stopped burning our garbage) and I opened the lid to the trash can and there, staring back up at me was the bodyless head of one of our biggest rabbits. It could very well have been Dr. Pepper; my infatuation with the rabbits waned as quickly as the warren grew. I immediately slammed the lid down and let out a horrified "Ohmyheck!" It was then that my mother had to start thinking of creative ways to prepare or preserve this newfound source of food that, really, tasted like chicken.
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It wasn't that rare of a sight to have several butchered rabbits sitting in the kitchen sink patiently waiting for my mom to do something with them. Friends that came to visit were particularly fascinated by this. One of my friends, Doug, was musing over them when one of the freshly dead carcasses began to twitch.
"Aaaaaaaaa! YUCK!" he belted. Then we fell down on the floor in horrified laughter.

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Mom made rabbit casserole, pressure-cooked rabbit, boiled rabbit, rabbit gravy, roast rabbit, rabbit stew, rabbit nuggets, rabbit delight, rabbit sandwiches, rabbit a la king, rabbit salad, baked rabbit, rabbit caciatore, crock-pot rabbit, rabbit fried rice, rabbit tacos, rabbit lasagna, rabbit noodle soup, even rabbit helper.
But this only put a dent in our overpopulation. As every proud Mormon woman of pioneer stock, it dawned on Mom that the best way to deal with too much food at one time was, of course, canning, or "putting them up." Thus began the boiling and cramming of rabbit meat and bones into big jars and sealing them with the special canning lids that go "pop" when they seal. After doing this for a few months, she grew weary of the process and, much to the dismay of my pioneer ancestors watching down from the Celestial Kingdom, she gave up and bought a bunch of heavy duty gallon sized freezer bags and dropped them all in the deep freezer in the basement, never to be seen again.

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A few years later, I got married. Claire's parents gave us some new living room chairs, and a nice amount of cash which we used to stock our little apartment kitchen. My parents gave us a box of jars of canned bunnies. The stab of disappointment wasn't a feeling that was new to me, but it was certainly new to my wife.