Goodbye Superman

When we were pulling up to the house last night I noticed there was a dog standing in our driveway.

We don't have a dog.

The dog had something in it's mouth. It was white. As we got closer I noticed it had some black spots, Superman is white with a few black spots on his back. This dog had Superman in his mouth, I'm thinking, "How the heck?!?"

I got out of the car and called to the dog. He dropped what I thought was Superman and he came running. He had a collar, a tag and an electric fence receiver thing on his collar. He was very friendly. Then he went and got the white thing and brought it to me.

It was Superman. He was still alive but not moving. I told the boys to keep the dog away from the rabbit and I ran in to get a towel. Running around to the back door I see the rabbit cage torn apart and no sign of Jack. On my way back out I saw Jack hiding in the weeds in the courtyard. By now the dog had moved Superman again; the boys were not very effective in protecting him.

I picked up Superman and wrapped him in the towel like a baby. Noah says, "He's our baby." We found a lid to a box to put him in and left him in the kitchen. Then we went to catch Jack but the dogs were chasing him so we ran the dogs off (oh, there were 2 dogs by this point). And then we couldn't find Jack, so we don't know what became of him. Our hope is that we just couldn't see him since it was dark and he's black and that we'll find him today.

I called our neighbor with dogs, but theirs were in the house with her. I didn't know of anyone else around that had big dogs.

I called the animal shelter but a recording said to call 911, but since the dogs were gone so I didn't call and started cooking dinner. Meanwhile, Noah is carrying around the lid with Superman in it saying, "This is my baby. Mine baby." It was too sweet, but I was afraid all the carrying would make him die.

Then out the back window I see the dogs are back and are sniffing around for Jack. I called 911 and they said they would have someone call me. By this time I get Tim up and he helped us tie up the younger dog so at least it wouldn't be after Jack again (if Jack is still alive).

The animal shelter people called me back and I gave them the tag numbers for the dogs and it turns out they are our other neighbor's dogs, and we didn't know they had those kind of dogs or we would have just called them (we only have 2 neighbors and they both have over 50 acres so it's hard to know the goings on of them). So then we felt kind of stupid since we could have just called our neighbor, but we didn't know and, they did tear apart the cage to get to the rabbits.

Next a police officer showed up to make sure the animals weren't vicious and that the shelter had contacted me and was contacting the owner. Then Tim called our neighbors and they had been out on their 4-wheelers and stuff trying to find the dogs. Apparently someone left their front gate open and their electric fence isn't working so the dogs got out. Once the gate was shut the dogs didn't know how to get back in so they camped out at our house.

When we got back inside, Superman was no longer alive. I told the boys that he had died, and Eli says, "But his eyes are still open." Like, see Mom, he's okay. Even after I said he was dead Noah wanted to carry him around and was picking leaves off of him and uncovering and covering him. He's so caring (although maybe not so observant to notice the object of his affections had passed on). Eli asked if we needed to send Superman on to heaven. I told him if Superman was going to heaven, he was already there, we just had his body.

Here's to you Superman. You were a rowdy fun-loving rabbit who loved grass. We'll miss you.