Rabbit and a Look Back in Trichotomy

3 years on

It was a little bit more than three years that we began our lockdown. We’re not quite back to pre-pandemic behaviour still - and I don’t think we ever will, or should, but I don’t think we will be taking less precaution than we do now. Wearing masks whenever we’re in a crowded indoor situation seems like a sensible thing to do, pandemic or not.

It is quite surreal to think about that time now, but yet it also seems recent. We stayed at the house for two months before driving the car anywhere; La Professeure returned to work a few months later, we were vaccinated a little more than a year later, and got on a getaway a few months after that, and I returned to the office more than two years later, we returned to travelling 2 ½ years after.

I’ve caught COVID twice now; and thankfully had only mild symptoms each time. But the specter of long covid is quite scary. I do feel more tired these days, but I”m sure it’s just due to my old age.

There are some things I miss during the lockdown:

• The decon chamber: we didn’t know at first if COVID could be transmitted on surfaces, so we would leave mail and parcel deliveries in our garage for 3 days before opening them. That made mail handling easy - we just dump the mail and parcels into the appropriate bin when we come back from our daily walk. And every morning, we would open mail and parcels from the bin three days ago. Because there is such a time gap between delivery and opening, it was like opening a christmas present - because we’d forgotten what we’d ordered.
  
• Zoom meetings: my cousin started a monthly family zoom during the pandemic, and we are continuing it now. The Treasurer started organising zoom concerts for our musician friends, which is more for social gathering than music. The nice thing is that she could include people who have moved away to L.A., or Oregon, or Wales that we couldn’t include in an in-person gathering. Another plus is we get to incorporate video in our performances - I could perform a music score synched to the video that I show on Zoom.
  
• The commute: Most obvious benefit, my commute changed from 1 hour to 1 minute. My teammates are geographically distributed to begin with, so there wasn’t a strong reason for me to go in anyways. I am enjoying the 2 days a week rhythm; I hope I get to keep it even when I switch teams.
  
• Working together: It was nice to spend all day with La Professeure sitting across from me in the early days of the pandemic. We had our daily walk, and we could consult with each other during the day. And on some days we would have to stop work at 5 before 6, and move our furniture to clear up a space for dance lessons. That stopped when she was required to work in person.
  

There are many more things that I don’t miss:

• The transfer: again, because of the worry of surface transmission, when we receive grocery deliveries, we would remove the outer packaging before letting it into the house. So It was a production every time we received deliveries: one of us would be the “dirty” handler, and the other would be the “clean” handler, and the “dirty” handler would open a package while the “clean” handler would extract the content inside. We got more practiced the more time we did it, but to this date I think we still have photos of cooking instructions of packaged food on our phones because we’d discard the packaging immediately. .
  
• The isolation: not being able to see people is a huge drawback.
  
• Virtual recitals: The amateur musician group held several “virtual recitals” between April 2020 to April 2021 where people submit their recordings and I stitch them together. It was adequate for something we did, but because of the varying quality of recording equipment, it was nowhere near as good as in-person events. We did a live stream event in partnership with another organisation as well, and that went okay. Still, it was “something to do”.
  

I think we are busy every other weekends, rather than every weekend like before the pandemics,which is nicer in a way, and we still continued some pandemic traditions (regular family zoom calls, working from home half the time, writing here), so hopefully we are better adjusted now.

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Rabbit brain

The rabbit is territorial and likes to explore, so the places off-limits to him (which are not yet rabbit-proofed) were of most interest to him. His “cage” is large - we put a fence around half the living room so he has access to half of it at all times. His enclosure is larger to him than our house is to us.

“The throne” is where his hay is, and where he does his business. The Carrier is a cat-carrier that he came with, and he would hide in it when he gets scared of something. The Alcove is where he takes his midday sleep when we are around. The sofa’s armrests is where he sleeps at night. The “Treat corner” is the area closest to where his treat is stored and he would lead us there to let us know he wants a treat. The Music corner is where he goes when I play the piano, and sometimes he goes there to relax, and work on chew toys. The pink arrows are human entrances.

We regularly have “free roam” time where he is allowed in rabbit-proofed areas of the house under supervision. He realizes that we are the ones who can open doors for him and move obstacles, so he would sometimes use his nose to nudge us to get our attention if he wants a door opened or an obstacle removed. The office is now mostly rabbit-proofed except for a desk where with computer cables under it. So I put some obstacles at the front of the desk to block off his access. He was determined to get under the desk, though, and found a shelf next to it that is a few inches off the ground, enough for him to squeeze his body under, which then leads to the desk. After a couple of successes (and me luring him out and put the obstacles back), I slipped a box under the shelf to block his way. However, that did not deter him; when he squeezed under the shelf and realized his way was blocked, he tried to pull the box out from under the shelf. He started making progress, but not fast enough to his liking, so after a few attempts, he came to nudge me, apparently trying to get me to help him remove the box. So we both went to the shelf, him squeezing his body under the shelf trying to pull the box out, and me sticking my hand under the shelf, trying to keep the box in. After a few minutes, he realized that I wasn’t there to help him. He stopped, backed out of the shelf, sat up straight and stared at me accusingly.

He thinks I’m a traitor.

He gave up on trying to get under the desk then, and hopped back to his enclosure. Rabbits have a way of expressing displeasure in their social group. They would kick up their hind legs towards rabbits they don’t like (presumably to flick dirt onto them). It’s the equivalent of a rabbit giving each other the middle finger. Our rabbit has done it to us when we failed to produce a treat he wanted, or sometimes just being too loud and interrupted his mid-day sleep. But this time I noticed that he did not flick me off as he hopped back to his enclosure. It was then that I realized he didn’t think I’m a traitor.

He thinks I’m an idiot.

Which is not far from the truth.

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This is the rabbit brain on music.

Several months ago La Professeure’s PhD advisor’s daughter is graduating high school with a music degree and had a senior recital which was streamed on Zoom. La Professeure listened on her laptop speaker. She is a violinist, and played a Mozart sonata to begin with, and then a new composition by Lera Auerbach that sounded to me like noise.

As the Auerbach piece was going on, La Professeure and I were looking at each other hoping for the piece to end soon, and then we noticed that the rabbit had telescoped (stood on his hind legs and stretched his head) from behind the sofa and perked up his ears.

Even the rabbit can tell new music from Mozart.

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Last updated March 19, 2023