Feeding Instructions

1. Find the key under the pot on the wicker table and enter through French doors in the atrium in the back of the house. …
2. Greet Bessie with a treat. Your choice. You'll learn. Put a couple in your pocket ... or if you don't want your change to smell like bacon ...
7. Although we walk her without the leash, Bessie demands attention and “range awareness.” If she senses she is out of your domain, she runs around trying to find a new pile of deer pellets, a fresh road kill, or will sometimes chase the phantom beast into the woods. You know the phantom beast is around when she perks up, poses, and jerks her head from one pose to another. (She is beautiful when the phantom beast shows up, but she also uses it as an excuse to go her own way, indefinitely, and you are being paid by the trip rather than by the hour.) …
16. … Let Bessie escort you to the rabbit hutch.
17. At this point, depending on her appetite, Bessie will try to gulp down some rabbit goodies under the rabbit cage. She wouldn’t be a dog otherwise. (Just a word of warning in case she tries to lick you later.) Make sure she uses her napkin. …
18. Change the rabbit water bottle and refill the food dish in the hutch. Access is through the small roof panel. …
20. Buster is the older of the two rabbits, white and now dominated by the other one, for whom, admittedly, we do not have the same feelings as those for Buster. Say “Hey, Buster,” putting the right intonation on it and letting her know you know she is the victim of circumstance, a prisoner of her pink skin and eyes, her white fur, and the needs of the once weak and pitiful foundling rabbit who has matured to become a dominatrix at poor Buster’s expense. The echoes of that greeting should indicate that Sadya, Vane and Randy will take her out more often, hold her, and let her walk on the fresh grass at every opportunity. And that she is a vivacious looking hunk of rabbit for a 10 year old. “Hey, Buster.”
21. Walk Bessie till she has peed and pooped. We use the time-worn, “Make your BM, Bessie,” because it does seem to have a salutatory effect. She will decide on a spot by a certain, almost telepathic movement, and will circle an extraordinary (seems to me, anyway) number of times. If the number is particularly high or if she changes directions more than once, she does not take offense if you laugh. She is more than a dog.
22. … walk Bessie into the woods. (Because the threat of the phantom beast sometimes looms, and though some, among them I, prefer the gentle light of stars regardless, the light switch for the outdoor lights is above the telephone, next to the French doors in the kitchen. They illuminate the rabbit hutch and the woods trail enough, in most cases, to foil the beast.) …
25. Release Bessie and spend as much time as you like smoking cigars, shooting darts, and otherwise socializing with her. …
27. Ah. Now Barney. Upstairs (through the living room from the kitchen bearing right, u-turn up, at the top, right.) in Sadya’s playroom is the we-call-it terrarium with a chamelion in it. He hides in the lip of the cover sometimes, so be careful when removing it or he will be CRUSHED or ESCAPE! You probably won’t have to remove the lid, though, because he has just been given 24 large crickets who have been left a large leaf of lettuce. Crickets are living in Eden. Barney is on safari there. …
28. Spray the back side of the tank liberally with water [rain forest!] from the sprayer next to the we-call-it aquarium, but try not to hit Barney. He springs alarmingly fast and might hurt his delicate being.
29. … Say your goodbyes. Check the door to the basement once more and leave through the French doors. Rattle them to be sure they are locked.