Fifteen Rabbits, Six Children, Two Dogs and One Editor Who Has Lost Control of the Narrative

—I want to begin by saying that I am a serious journalist.

—I spend my days in the sacred scrolls of local government: comprehensive plan amendments, staff comments, municipal finance, and documents that contain the phrase “pursuant to” so often it begins to feel like a religion. I publish a newspaper with a staff of two, one of whom is my wife. We also have six children, which makes our editorial meetings less like a newsroom and more like a hostage negotiation conducted entirely in snack requests.

—I do all of this on and around some of the most expensive real estate on the West Coast of Florida, places where a modest cottage costs more than the gross domestic product of Liechtenstein. I like to think this puts me on a high intellectual plane.

—Instead, my life is a clown show with a dog in every ring.

—The Warning Signs I Ignored

—My wife loves rabbits. “Loves” is the polite word. A court-appointed psychologist would say “obsession,” and a court-appointed psychologist would also want to see the rabbit room.

—I should have known. Early in our relationship, when we were in college and grad school in New Mexico, she had a large rabbit named Zoya who lived out back. We lived in an adobe house, where insulation is a rumor and the windows are less installed than suggested. Cooling came from a swamp cooler, which is a machine that blows damp air around so your house smells like a county fair that has given up.

—Zoya added a rural note to this atmosphere. She thumped her feet at all hours, which I came to understand was rabbit for “I wish to speak to the manager.” And every day, her cage produced a small pyramid of what I will politely call rabbit pellets, which would avalanche onto the ground in quantities that suggested she was running a manufacturing operation.

—Did I walk away? I did not. I was young. In New Mexico, you let a lot of things slide, including, apparently, the load-bearing question of what kind of household you are building.

—Fifteen Rabbits and a Prison With a View

—Long story short: we now have about fifteen rabbits.

—Each one has a name tag. I built them a rabbit room, which is a part of our house we converted for them, and it has a stunning view looking out over Siesta Key. The humans in this family pay a premium for that view. The rabbits get it free. Each cage has its own watering and feeding system, which is more than I can say for the children.

—My wife has favorites, and the favorites get the attention, the out-of-cage time, the scratching behind the ears. The rest are, let’s say, general population. It’s like a federal prison, but a nice one. There are bars, sure, but the food is excellent. Minimum security, maximum fiber.

—Halloween at the Compound

—Once a year, we bring the rabbits out.

—Our neighborhood has become known as the place to be on Halloween. Buses park in the Catholic church lot up the street, and families walk in from as far away as Siesta Beach, a migration of small superheroes that rivals the wildebeest. I put out tables. I play the welcoming host. We always have different rabbits for the kids to meet.

—I have noticed that a man with a big bowl of candy, a rabbit in his arms, a wife at his side, and a gaggle of children automatically reads as the safest man in America. Anyone who knows me knows I need all the help I can get, and I take it where I can find it.

—Which brings me to the dog.

—Enter Bandit, Star of White Fang II

—We also have a dog named Bandit. He weighs about seventy pounds, looks like he was cast in a wilderness movie, and sleeps on our bed, where he licks our faces. Remember that. It’s going to matter.

—Bandit has a second talent, and it is teeth. He has an extremely fast, extremely delicate grab, like a surgeon with a mouth. He can snatch a bird or a lizard out of the bushes so instantly that you don’t even notice, and he never breaks stride. Then he’ll walk into the house, jaw clamped shut like a man guarding a state secret, and next thing you know there is a stick, or a lizard, or a bird, in the living room, and everyone is staring at each other.

—This is the dog I decided to take cycling.

—I own a lightweight bike, carbon fiber or something, and I discovered that if I hold Bandit’s leash, he will pull me through the neighborhood at around twenty miles an hour. It’s basically an electric bike, but with fur and no battery. I do almost nothing. I get all the credit.

—I felt like I was in White Fang. In my head, I was a rugged outdoorsman. In reality, I was a man being towed down a residential street by a wolf lookalike, in the manner of a water skier who has lost the boat, the water, and his nerve.

—But I was thrilled. I pictured my wife coming home and seeing me. I pictured the neighbors, nodding approvingly. There goes Steve. Exercising the dog. Look at the wellness. It would be a Hallmark commercial. It would be inspiring.

—I was probably going fifteen miles an hour, which on a bicycle pulled by a seventy-pound dog is the speed at which you no longer have any say in the matter, when Bandit veered, dipped, and snatched something off the middle of the road without slowing down.

—I looked down. Bandit looked up.

—In his mouth was a rabbit.

—Not a living rabbit. Not even a recently living rabbit. This was a rabbit that had been run over by a car, left to bake in the Florida sun for what I estimate was about a week, and achieved a stable, two-dimensional state. It was completely flat, with the fur still on it, the entire outline intact. A pancake rabbit. It was horrifying, grotesque, and yet somehow almost professional, as though a taxidermist had been told to make a rabbit but was only given enough budget for one side.

—Bandit, meanwhile, was beaming. That was no bone. That was bunny jerky. He looked at me the way a retriever looks at his owner when he’s brought back the duck, if the duck were a place mat.

—This is when I saw a car coming up the road.

—It was my wife and my daughter. They were returning from the store, where they had purchased a bunny costume for Halloween. Think about that. This is a family with fifteen actual rabbits, and they are out buying a costume of one. At some point, you don’t have a hobby. You have a theme.

—So there they were, driving toward me, and there I was, on a bike, being pulled by a dog. And in the dog’s mouth was a flat dead rabbit. And this dog, remember, sleeps on our bed and licks our faces.

—I did not know what to do.

—I would tell you how this scene ended, but I am an editor, and I know the value of a good cliffhanger. More importantly, I know the value of my marriage, and my wife reads this column before it runs.

—A Brief Flashback, Because Therapy Is Expensive

—This reminds me of another incident.

—Years ago, we lived on Westway Drive in Lido Shores, a lovely neighborhood of architecturally significant homes and retirees who spend their golden years tearing out tile and redoing everything. They treat home renovation the way other people treat cosmetic dentistry and dermatology: as a lifelong calling with no finish line. But that’s a different column.

—At the time, we had a houseful of teenagers and a small dog named Charlie, whom I called Charlito. Charlie looked like a cross between a Doberman and a Chihuahua, as though someone had negotiated a settlement in which the Chihuahua got the size and the Doberman got the attitude. He was also an escape artist.

—One day he got out. He ran, and ran, and ran. I looked everywhere. No Charlie.

—“Are you the owner of Charlie?” said a voice that was tense, angry, and fully in command of the situation.

—“Yes, I am,” I said, in the tone of a man who suspects he has already lost the argument.

—The man informed me that dogs barking in an animal hospital were, in his word, incompatible. I said, in an effort to be a good citizen, “What animal hospital?”

—“This is David Pilston,” he said. “I’m the CEO of Save Our Seabirds.”

—It turned out that Charlie had trotted up the boardwalk, entered the bird hospital as though he’d been invited, and begun barking at the injured birds in their cages. Which, Mr. Pilston noted, was counterproductive.

—I had two immediate reactions. The first was shame. I was apologetic, mortified, and ready to accept the title of negligent pet owner in perpetuity. The second was a deep, practical fear, because I did not know where my dog was, and I did not know how Mr. Pilston felt about dogs, and I was praying that his love of birds extended to a love of dogs, and maybe even to a love of dog owners.

—“I’m so sorry,” I said. “I’m so grateful. Where is he?”

—“He’s in the broom closet,” said Mr. Pilston.

—You have to understand what a broom closet means to a man in my position.

—A broom closet is where they keep the bleach.

—In about two seconds I had imagined everything. Charlie, a troublemaker by trade, a dog incapable of sitting quietly anywhere, alone in the dark with the cleaning supplies and no supervision. This was not a dog who would sit and reflect. This was a dog who would get into something.

—Journalism’s Finest Hour

—So I did what any responsible dog owner and newspaper publisher would do. I immediately ran two full pages for the Save Our Seabirds gala.

—Whether they needed them or not. I wanted them to be the biggest nonprofit in the region. I wanted every person in the county to know about this gala. I was prepared to cover this organization like it was the Super Bowl.

—Because in the end, I didn’t see Charlie as a dog who had broken into a hospital. I saw him as a rogue Scared Straight program, a tiny guy yelling at the birds in their cages: You think you’re tough? Look at where you ended up!

—After many years as an editor, a husband, and a father, I would like to share some wisdom, hard-won and not at all reliable:

—One. If a dog can carry it, a dog will carry it, and eventually it will be in the house.

—Two. If a man has fifteen rabbits, he does not have a hobby. He has a theme.

—Three. The surest sign that you’ve lost control of the narrative is when it’s in a dog’s mouth.

—Four. When you’ve wronged a nonprofit, the correct remedy is two full pages of advertising.

—If you’re in the neighborhood on Halloween night, please stop by. There will be candy. There will be rabbits. There will be a man at a folding table working very, very hard to look safe.

—Bandit will be on a leash.

—And whatever you do, please do not offer him anything flat.