034 B - Will I get to be old

This article may require technical feedback that may cause details to change. I'll keep this post updated when I talk to L.

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This evening, I am tearing out the soiled porch carpet. I will setup an octagon made of silver-coated-aluminum-pet-fencing to give GG and Possum enough space, without giving them the entire porch. We broke our lease by having the rabbits. It was the virgin days of the end-times, we wanted a meat farm. I learned a lot. Our landlord was unhappy but I think he realized he was grateful we would replace the carpet and that he needed our help to rent this place. We could just put up a sign every time he tries to show it that says we have COVID and they should fuck off. So I think that's the last we're gonna hear about the rabbits.

We also got them a new cage, not the "breeder" cage they're in now. They are no longer on the docket as breeders. They have become pet. And I think we're all more relaxed. My hope is that by having rabbit pets we can come up with better and less labor intensive enclosures and lives for the rabbits.

We always wanted ours to run free without fucking each other or fighting or both. So our routine was that we would give each cage of bunnies a day out, and then eventually two days out at a time and we would just rotate through each of the cages. This is exhausting, but the rabbits love it.

For her last litter with us, Fat Becky made five sable and one pointed white. The first sable with a personality was a ball shaped one I called Dummy because Dummy would crawl under your feet. Eventually I lost track of Dummy, and all five become Dummy.

We went down a streaming service hole and found You Cannot Kill David Arquette. The movie is an object lesson in how cool gas-lighting can be — we loved it. We saw it the weekend it came out (Aug 22, 2020) and named the pointed white one David Arquette. And then of course we killed him.

L is in charge of this process, I am merely the helper. This starts on the main floor of the house. He walks towards the porch hoping he doesn't smell like the blood of rabbits we've already processed since this could scare the rabbits. He takes off his house slippers and exchanges them for porch slippers.

Across the street our neighbor's spend all of their retired hobby time on their porch while our’s has fully devolved into a barn. He goes out and gently picks up an adolescent rabbit, ideally there is no fighting and L is not bleeding afterwards. L walks from through the kitchen and down the stairs into the basement with its grey painted floor and white painted cinderblock walls.

L puts the rabbits head in a reclining-V-shaped contraption (called a “Hopper Popper”) that is anchored to a work bench. He slides the neck down the V, then positions his hands on the rabbit's feet and pulls up and to the left to separate the spine from the head. Life stops. The involuntary spasms begin.

L goes into the small mildew smelling basement closet that is technically under our front port where we get all the deliveries of our gadgets. He hangs the rabbit by the legs using slipknots made of twine. The rabbit hangs from what was a mic stand the first time we did this and is now a wooden post stretched between bookshelves. The rabbit is suspended over a bucket. Using scissors, L cuts the neck or severs the head to let the blood out.

Using a scalpel he cuts the fur around the feet, then makes incisions that I can't quite see that allows the fur to be pulled down like removing the meat sack from packaging. It basically just peels off. The legs are cut at the fur joint with the scissors and taken to the dissections table. I begin cleaning up the bucket.

The body is placed on a plastic cutting board on its back. Using a scalpel separates the anus from the body so that when the body cavity is opened the intestines will fall into a bucket I have pre-lined with a trash bag. L is a master with a scalpel and scissors so this process works very smoothly -- disconnect anus, open body cavity, cut a few support structures and dump into bucket.

After this he takes the rabbit to the laundry sink and cleans out the cavity. He then places the body on towel to remove excess moister. He wraps the body in newsprint and I hold a gallon sized ziplock back and we label it and put it in the freezer.

I then take the blood and fur from the draining station and put those all in the guts bag and remove as much air as possible to I can put this bag in the freezer until trash day so our garbage doesn't become putrid.

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