When Hugh was a little boy, his mother told him, when reading stories, that rabbits say 'meep'. As in, cows say 'moo', sheep say 'baa' and ducks say 'quack' and so on. I had never heard this myself, and in fact, had never heard a rabbit say anything, all I had ever seen a rabbit do was 'waffle' its nose, but, to keep Hugh happy, we carried on the tradition when we had children.
This was fine when they were very little. We read various stories where cows went 'moo', sheep went 'baa', hens went 'cluck' and rabbits went 'meep'. As we visited various farms and zoos we saw the animals in question and the children heard them 'talking'. We hadn't seen any rabbits, or if we had Penny hadn't really taken much notice of them. Then we got two as pets, Blossom (Penny's) and Meepy (Ben's). These were two black and white baby rabbits. The children loved them dearly and were very gentle with them. They cuddled them regularly and for the first few months they were lovely creatures. However, they never muttered a word. Penny started questioning us. Hugh had to own up that rabbits didn't actually say 'meep' after all. At this Penny was totally shocked! She had been lied to by her parents! On top of this, the rabbits turned vicious! We ended up having to take them to a rabbit re-homing centre and we then re-homed a friend's rabbit, LouLou, who was a lovely 4 year old brown rabbit, very gentle and who lived with us for another 6 years before dying of old age.
Penny with LouLou
Penny still brings up how us telling her that rabbits say 'meep' was the biggest lie of her childhood! She does laugh when she says it, but I think it is something that will go down in the family history now and we probably won't dare pass it on to any more of the children for fear of disturbing them too!!
Please go to Sian's blog to see some wonderful stories this sunny Sunday.
Please go to Sian's blog to see some wonderful stories this sunny Sunday.
13 comments:
A great little story!
lol! That's a great one Becky! And a lovely picture of Penny too, doesn't she look cute?
My Dad used to tell me that when he was in Africa he ate pink bananas. I never did work out whether that one was true or not..
Thanks for the story and giving us a laugh today. I'm going to be checking out any rabbits I come across now
Funny how any 'little lies' you tell your children come back to bite you!!
Great story today! My husband and I sometimes joked how funny it would be to teach the children the wrong words for things! I don't think we ever did it (at least not consciously), but it did make us giggle to contemplate telling them the pasta was a carrot or something like that.
Rinda
How funny! A lovely story :o)
I think rabbits should go meep, it's brilliant. Love it!
Aaww, so sweet, it's a really lovely story
Children have amazing memories (unlike me!!) but I do love the idea of rabbits saying meep!
LOL. Maybe it was a lie but it was one amazing memory for her.
Great story, Becky...and love the pic!
Alison xx
lol, a great story, it reminds me of a killer rabbit we had!
Poor rabbits who can't go Meep! Wonder where that started?
Oh, no - that's funny lol! I shall listen carefully to every rabbit I meet from now on, just in case it turns out to be true after all...
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