One of the treasures of a gift economy is the release from the need to buy stuff. Any stuff. The assumption is that all we need comes from the earth around us; we only need to a) look for it and b) not want what must be manufactured. What has made this much easier for me to say than do has been this infiltrating of my … what, mind? … with this idea that if I need something, surely it’s out there for me to buy, and bought or complicated whatevers are so much better than made or simple whatevers. Moving to the farm has shown me the falseness of this in so many ways, but I still keep running up against this capitalistic assumption with which I’ve been indoctrinated.  Midnight and Al have been my most recent teachers on this subject. 

Midnight, named for his all black fur, is a domestic rabbit and came to us shortly after we opened Sundance. He’s eight years old and has been a loved pet all his life. When his previous owners knew they were not in a position to give him his best life anymore, they reached out to us. I hope we’ve been giving him that since then.  

Al, named after Albert Einstein because of his long wild grey fur, is a fiber rabbit, which means that his previous owner groomed him and used the fur to spin yarn and create clothing. No one knows exactly how old he is, but he’s at least five as of today. He had been living in a barn, so the transition to the house has taken him some time.  

When both rabbits came to us, they had been eating primarily dried rabbit food that’s sort of like dried dog or cat food. They would both have hay available all of the time, but neither used it as their primary food source.  I just continued that feeding routine: fresh water, dried food pellets, and hay.  They both ate the dried food, rarely ate the hay, and drank a healthy amount of water every day. I never thought about it, never questioned whether it was the best for them.  When either rabbit would have the occasional bout of diarrhea, I just chalked it up to the occasional carrot stick or piece of fresh kale I had given them the previous day. 

Now I look at my behavior and could kick myself.  For years, I’ve told people that feeding cows dried corn is absolutely human-driven, not cow-driven. Can you imagine a cow in a field tearing an ear of corn off a stalk, shucking it, then eating only the kernels and not the cob? Only in a Saturday morning cartoon would that happen. Why I couldn’t transfer that idea to rabbits, I’ll never know. Rabbits live on grasses! And carrots! And leafy green things! They don’t mash all the ground up greens together, dry them, break them into small pieces, then eat them! Good grief, Tracy. I hadn’t yet made that connection, though.

One morning, I looked in at Al and discovered that not only had he not eaten, he hadn’t pooped, either. That didn’t seem good, so all that day I watched him, noticing things I hadn’t paid attention to before. His ears were always back, never up and forward in curiosity; he never raised himself on his back legs to sniff the air; he was never comfortable with my touch, despite the two of us interacting for almost a year. He just wasn’t engaged with the world the way other domesticated rabbits I’d been with were. 

That evening, I did what I always do when I’m concerned about one of our animals ~ I started reading. What I found out was that a rabbit can suffer from something called gastrointestinal stasis, which happens when a rabbit’s digestive system slows down or stops moving. This is really dangerous and can lead to death rather quickly. One of the causes is poor diet. 

Next, I read all about what a good diet is for a rabbit, and surprise, no where did I find any expert saying that eating dried food pellets was a good diet. Fresh leafy greens and water was called for, so I pulled Al’s dried food, filled his feeder with fresh timothy hay, fresh lettuce and kale, and gave both rabbits big bowls of water. My plan was that if I saw no change in Al by morning, I would call our vet. 

I slept little that night and went downstairs really early. When I looked in at Al, I was so surprised! All the leafy greens were gone, as was half the bowl of water. And Al? He was sitting up, munching on some hay, looking at me as if he was finally awake and ready to engage with the world. I hurriedly gathered more kale and lettuce leaves, gave him more water, then turned to Midnight, pulled all his dried food out, and gave him the same breakfast as Al. Both rabbits ate like they were starving. Later that morning, I noticed a huge pile of rabbit droppings in Al’s pine shavings and knew he was going to be fine. 

I kept up their new diet for several days, fully intending to give them both dried food again at some point ~ but then I started noticing some really stark behavior changes. Al was greeting me at the door of his hutch every morning and evening, raising himself on his hind legs, ears perked forward, nose twitching, almost vibrating with excitement at the leafy greens in my hands. He had never greeted me before. He used some of the hay to make himself a nest in his hutch for his naps, and when he slept, his head rested to the side, his front paws were stacked one on top of the other, and he was laying so that his belly was visible. He had never slept like that before. And Al, who had never let me just pet him to say hi, was now sitting still for pets and brief conversations, not shivering and trying to make himself small or bolt away. 

There were changes in Midnight, too, along these same lines, but the greatest change has been in Al. It’s as if his stomach doesn’t hurt anymore, he doesn’t need to protect himself, and now, he knows me. I was amazed, until I put it together like the cows. A rabbit’s digestive system evolved for greens, grasses, the occasional raw vegetable, and select sticks. That humans have domesticated the species doesn’t mean that evolution has caught up with that domestication and changed their dietary needs or abilities. 

Maya Angelou once said, “I did then what I knew how to do. Now that I know better, I do better.” Now, I know this little piece of rabbits better: no more dried food. I’ve got to say, though, I’m not happy when I find these hidden capitalistic pieces of myself, especially when it causes another suffering. Hopefully, soon, I’ll be able to just stop myself when my initial spending go-to kicks in. Maybe I ought to just carry a picture of Al!