The (not so) fantastic Mr. Fox….

Losing pets is horrid and it sucks. Losing pets and having to explain to your five year old that both of her much loved bunny rabbits were killed by a pack of hungry foxes somewhat intensifies the suckiness.

During the last couple of days we have had to console our daughter, pick up the pieces (literally) and perform a moonlit funeral (we had planned for a morning ceremony but the foxes weren’t content with taking just one of our rabbits, and came back at around 8 looking for the body of the other one). We thought it best to put them to rest as quickly as possible, in order to save Bella from even more emotional trauma.

So as we both sit here with our very much needed beers and reflect on the events that have unfolded over the past couple of days, we thought we would try to bring something positive from everything that has happened and give all those parents with pets and small children a bit of a heads up.

Now we can’t promise that everything we said and did while dealing with the situation was exactly the right thing to do (we are praying that we haven’t screwed Bella up too much in the process of explaining death) but she seems ok now, so all we can really do is let you know how we got to this point – a five year old sleeping soundly in her bed and two ice cold beers.

We acted quickly - Dan dealt with most of the clean up by herself at 3am after hearing the commotion outside. (I was away the night of the incident.) After not being able to locate the second rabbit however, we both knew that the garden would be off limits for a couple of days until we had a clear picture of what had happened.

 We were honest - We knew that we would have to tell Bella as quickly as possible, so Dan set her alarm for 6am (long before Bella’s natural wake up time). As with every delicate topic we approach with Bella, we were as honest as possible but used language and details that were appropriate for her level of understanding. We explained that it would be less upsetting for her not to go into the garden for a day or so, because we hadn’t yet found Merle, and didn’t want her to be frightened if she found him first. She had many questions throughout the whole of Friday, and we tried to answer them all as honestly as we could.

We used what she already knew about nature - At first, all that Bella felt was overwhelming anger towards the foxes. Luckily Bella had learnt about the jungle and Africa at school this term. We knew that she had been taught about lionesses and how they hunt and kill their pray in order to feed the rest of the pack. We were able to help Bella link this to what the foxes had done, and explained that foxes don’t have a way of knowing which animals are pets and which animals are wild – they just know what looks like food and that’s all that matters to them. We also spoke about Roald Dahl’s Fantastic Mr Fox (one of her favourite films) in the same way and although it didn’t help an awful lot, it did help Bella to see things in a different light.

We distracted but didn't ignore - Throughout Friday, Dan did all she could to help take Bella’s mind off of what had happened. We found that Bella would almost forget about it all but then suddenly remember and just sit and cry, or stop talking. We rode the highs with the lows and just let Bella take the lead. When she felt happy, we smiled with her and when she cried, we cried too. Dan decided to take Bella to her favourite cake shop and our lovely friend Liz even let her help decorate a birthday cake that she was making.

 We involved Bella - We tried to involve Bella in every decision that needed to be made. This involved explaining what happens to things after they die. Bella wanted to keep Daryl in a box in her bedroom and Dan had to explain why this wasn't possible, and what our options were. After a very long and delicate chat, we decided to bury him in Bella’s favourite box and wrapped in one of her baby blankets to keep him warm. She popped a crocodile (that she had made out of an egg box) on top of him to keep him safe and decided that she would be the one to put the lid on. We were reluctant at first to let Bella be this involved but she was adamant that she wanted to be. Luckily Daryl was intact when Dan found him, and looked as though he was sleeping so it seemed ok to let her say goodbye. Unfortunately when the foxes decided to pop back for another go, they left us with another horrid surprise. For some reason, unbeknownst to us, they had decided to bring back the lower half of Merle’s body and leave it in the exact spot that Dan had found Daryl. We decided not to let Bella see him, but instead placed Daryl over him so that looked like they were snuggled up together.

We showed Bella that we are human - As mentioned before, we showed Bella that she was not alone in feeling upset. We mainly just cuddled her, stroked her head and cried with her and ate a lot of cake and Easter eggs.

We remembered - We spent the day remembering all of the funny and naughty things that the rabbits used to do and how they made us all laugh. We also spent time telling Bells about some of our old pets and making her laugh with all of our funny stories.

The past two days have been a bit rubbish, but they have also been a massive learning curve for us and for Bella. We are just hoping that the decisions we have made have been the right ones and that we haven’t emotionally scarred her too much.

Dan and Steve.