I first got Flower in a pet store in Montreal in early November of 2002. He was only 8 weeks old and $20 Canadian Dollars. He was a mutt, but mostly netherland dwarf, and he fit in the palm of my hand.
That first year we got into so many adventures together. He liked to dance around my feet and once he peed in my hair while I was sleeping. He was so small and his ears were so weird and tiny that sometimes people didn't believe that he was a rabbit and thought he was a disgusting rodent. RABBITS AREN'T RODENTS THEY'RE LAGOMORPHS! That means that their scrotums are in front of their peniseses.
Shortly after, I forced him into modeling for my various projects, just as I plan on doing to my children and the disabled people I plan on meeting in the future.
I was editor of Red Herring at the time, and I got him on the February cover.
Later in the year, for June's art issue, I put him in my Red Herring art photo essay.
I don't remember why I thought that essay was funny. Notice the stiffness of the layout--it's the publishing magic of Adobe Pagemaker, which was all the school's budget would allow us.
Flower and I would cross the Canadian-US border many times that year, as I took him home for American Thanksgiving, Christmas Break and Reading Week, or as I called it, Loving Flower Week. I graduated from McGill soon after and we moved back to Jersey City.
I thought that Flower needed to get laid, so I bought Flower a girlfriend and named her Butterscotch in November. This is a picture of Butterscotch from when I first got "her".
They got along very well the first few weeks. This is Butterscotch and Flower eating pellets and hay together from the same bowl.
At first, I was concerned about all of the face-humping, because Butterscotch was just a baby and had a tiny face, and I was grossed out when I had to clean their faces afterwards.
Six months later, Butterscotch went through puberty, and tried to kill Flower for the first time. Then I found out that Butterscotch was a late-bloomer and had to get neutered, and then they had to be separated for Flower's health. It was a relationship gone sour, and I couldn't help but blame myself for yelling at them and squirting them with a water bottle all those face-humping times.
For the upcoming GynoCult photo shoot, we chose Butterscotch to be the rabbit in it. Flower was just not as photogenic. His coat was camouflaged and he would fade into the background, whereas Butterscotch's pristine white coat meant he would die instantaneously if left outside, and was optimal for pictures.
However, I'd chosen Flower to make a Christmas card. These are some test-shots for Christmas 2003 or 2004. I don't really remember what year it was.
The most promising picture was the last one, but I ultimately abandoned the project because I thought that it looked like animal abuse.
Flower didn't model again until my calendar, which came out in January of 2007. I will post those pictures tomorrow, when I retrieve them from the computer at my old job.
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