The pitter, patter of tiny paws... Could it be a Christmas miracle?
A furry Christmas miracle? The kids at one childcare centre thought they’d discovered the wonder of immaculate conception – and her name’s not Mary, it’s Rosie the rabbit.
For months, Rosie lived alone in a hutch with only the company of the children at Auckland childcare agency Small World – no other rabbits.
Then one Monday morning the staff and children arrived to a blessed surprise: baby bunnies.
But how? The story starts in July, when the centre gave away three rabbits, including Rosie’s long-term partner Jack, to new homes.
The children insisted on keeping Rosie, said manager Helen Blackburn, who had it in the back of her mind to take the rabbit to the vet to get fixed. But Rosie was surely safe from suitors behind the bars of her cage, and a fenced-in daycare centre, so Blackburn felt no need to rush the process.
‘‘Then we came in one Monday and she had baby bunnies. We were so shocked, we just couldn’t believe it.’’
With no other rabbits around, suspicions first fell to Jack, but the vet quickly ruling out their tale of true love as the period of separation was too long – female rabbits are pregnant for about 31-days.
Unfortunately that vet has also quashed the Christmas theory saying a fence and a cage were no barrier to amorous rabbits.
Rosie’s children were fawnybrown with a wild look and there were plenty of fawny-coloured wild rabbits at nearby suburb,
hinerau (Mount Hobson).