Confessions of a bunny-holic

I’m sure I should have kept a precise census of all the stuffed animals I had before down-sizing. But it’s been hard enough deciding what to get rid of and what to keep, in every category. Counting them seemed like a stupid amount of extra effort.

The one thing I am still finding after 29 huge leaf bags, is more and more bunnies and rabbits. I think man, what was up with the rabbits? Yes, they multiple, but not usually in this setting. Think I’ve figured it out, finally. Any given day, in any stuffed animal selection, or toy store, you’ve hopefully not a nice little variety of animals. Some bears, dogs or cats, some assorted wildlife or fish, and so on. You’d probably think bears would win out over everything, given the classic teddy bear availability. (except lately where unicorns are over-running the market.) So why on earth do I have mounds and mounds of rabbits? Because every year, year after year, we get inundated with rabbit stuffies at Easter. Sure, sometimes there are some chicks or sheep, but the vast majority are bunnies. And like Pringles, you can’t have just one. If they come in blue, yellow, pink, green, blue, and purple, well, it’s a good chance that I got at least 2 or 3 of them. Or even the browns. I’ve found lovely textured and relatively realistic-ish looking fur on some of them. But when it comes in white, light, medium and dark brown, again, even if I don’t have every single one released, chances are I got at least a couple varieties. And like Marie Kondo suggests, I probably evaluated each one of them individually, as if in a vacuum of space and time. I looked at a new arrival on its own merits, not compared to the ever-increasing mountain I had at home. Those previous acquisitions were completely out of sight and mind. I’m sure I looked at each new flock of rabbits each year with unprejudiced open-ness to whether it, on its own merits, was worthy of coming home to stay with me. New bunnies every single year for over 25 years. Yeah, you do the math. And that’s not counting any other incidental bunnies still available all year long. Maybe bunnies used to be as ubiquitous as unicorns are now. I would have thought nothing of it as long as I liked them. They’re probably a good small child staple. Maybe they were the new teddy bears of the day.

For winter holidays, I had several penguins, bears, and moose with winter sweaters or scarves, but nothing like the population of bunnies. No one has flooded the winter market like they do with bunnies in spring. Not even Coca-cola bears, and believe me, I have a few of those too.