Silver, a chinchilla rex rabbit, our new pet

This past year we’ve had a little white gerbil as our pet, named Snowball by the two little boys who let us adopt him. Snowball was quiet and sweet, and he lived to a decent age, for a gerbil. When he passed away, I was sad, but not terribly upset.

One of my daughters, however, began to act out. She became more anxious than usual. But it wasn’t until we stumbled into a rabbit show that we made the connection between her behavior and the loss of our pet.

Surrounded by rabbits, it occurred to me that a rabbit might help my daughter. Sure enough, the addition of Silver, a soft rex rabbit, to our home corresponded with better behavior from our daughter.

It isn’t that our daughter interacts much with the rabbit. Of the individuals in our household, she is the least likely to feed Silver, pet Silver, or permit Silver to share her “space.” But there is still something about having another entity in the house that isn’t human that makes all the humans seem more similar. So when I am about buying rabbit food or hay or bedding, I think of the amount of money I might spend on therapy or medication. Then I am content.

Happily, the rabbit is now pretty well adjusted to his new home. As an two year old “unaltered” male, Silver initially did his best to mark our home as his. But now he limits his urinary gifts almost entirely to the litter box in his cage. Even his droppings rarely “drop” when he is out and about in the public areas.

It is not just my autistic daughter who has benefitted from Silver’s presence in our home. Almost all the rest of us have had a time when the ability to stroke Silver’s amazingly soft fur helped calm us after a difficult situation. Beyond that, he is simply amazing to watch, in his various moods.

Caring for Silver has now become part of our collective daily ritual, another one of the shared meta-experiences that makes us family. Before walking into that rabbit show, I could never have imagined having a rabbit as a pet. Now that Silver has been with us for several weeks, I can’t imagine being happy if he were to be taken from us.