Reflecting on Horton and Pinky

As a child, I was pretty much on the gullible side – or perhaps just wanted so much to believe in the unreal that I tried to make it real.

I recall an Easter when my Aunt Alice purchased two white bunnies.  She gave the bunnies to the children of her two brothers.  Patrick and I called ours “Pinky” (though Patrick himself most likely didn’t have anything to do with the naming; it sounds like I came up with the name and forced him to go along) and Kevin and Michelle named their rabbit “Greenfeet” or so I believed.

I was fascinated by both Dr. Seuss “Horton” stories – in the latter, the egg hatched at the end of the story and out came a bird that had Horton’s head.  How fascinating.  I wondered if it would work on rabbits as well.  It doesn’t.

Never mind that Pinky was only three or four weeks, totally uncooperative and wouldn’t sit on the egg unless I was holding her on top of it (or him.  I don’t think I really knew if Pinky was male or female.  I don’t really guess I thought about it one way or the other.  I never thought of Horton as male or female.  I was not all that bright) but I had taken the egg from the refrigerator.  Placed it outside near a bush in our backyard (Pinky was usually in a cage on the inside of the house) but I didn’t want my mom to find out what I was doing.  

I don’t recall how many weeks went by before a rotten odor was detected coming from the direction of that bush.  Not only was I not getting a half bird/half bunny.  I had wasted (and forgotten about) the egg.

Pinky and Greenfeet both died within the first three months.  I think they were “loved” to death. All that I have left now is this story.  I don’t even know if Pinky's bones remain in my mom’s former backyard.  Probably.