The Bunny Experiment

A while back the house fell into a panic at bed time because we could not find Stella’s bunny. The bunny has been around for a while now. If I remember correctly it was part of Stella’s Easter basket. The main purpose for the bunny was to provide her a security blanket for sleep time. According to “research” objects such as these give children comfort at night and help create familiarity and sleep associations. Yeah, we all know how that started out.

I digress. So bunny goes missing and Grandma, Belinda, and I go into overdrive looking for him. He is no where to be found and we have torn the place a part. We finally found the guy by the time we had reached the final stages for our landing procedure and all was right with the world. We have no conclusive data that Stella would have even noticed its absence should we have been unable to find it, but no one wanted to test that hypothesis either.

It got all of us talking about what were to happen if he goes missing permanently. What if we threw the fellow into the wash and he did not dry in time for sleep time and naps? When dealing with an 8 month old you take these concerns very seriously. I don’t remember for sure, but I believe we found the guy in the laundry room because he needed to be freshened up. Stella loves the little guy and will often be chewing on his ears and picking at his eyes. Like any bunny who loves to jump around his luscious fur coat has become more like that of an alley cat.

Belinda got to working. That weekend, instead of washing the bunny, she went to the store where we bought the bugger to see if she could find another. Nope! It was a seasonal item and it wasn’t that season.  

Next she started to search the net. Turns out the bunny is made in England and distributed by some company in California. Part of me was happy that it was not made in China considering the problems they have had with toy manufacturing in the past, but England? When the bunny spoke I would often her Bugs Bunny and not the rabbit from Alice in Wonderland. So Belinda orders not one but two of these guys. Days later they arrive. You can imagine the jokes that were made about bunnies multiplying.

So I decide we should do a test. Could Stella tell the difference between old and new? The new ones smelled like fabric softener and the older one smelled like formula. When I made the comparison to Belinda she explained to me that babies don’t have bad breath and that the bunny smell more like sweet milk. Hmm. Ok.

So we sat her down and strategically placed the bunnies around her. For a while there she would just look at them. Then she would look at my camera as I tried to document the experiment. She finally reached for one of the new bunnies. She brought it close to her face and examined it. Did she know? Could she tell? We started to think not. And just when the experiment was about to have its conclusion she dropped the bunny and picked up the old one and started to smile. We had been punk’d. She took her bunny, chewed on its ear in satisfaction and went on to playing.

Cost of each bunny: $12

Cost for shipping: $5

Cost of money used to trick your child but only learn that it couldn’t be done: $29.

Cost of Stella laughing at her folks for trying to trick her: priceless.

Not to be out foxed we are currently working on a plan to soak the bunnies in milk to give them the “sweet” smell. Let’s see how that turns out.