Remembering Ozymandias: King of Rabbits

Look at the mischief in his eyes

My good friend Ozymandias died on Saturday 9 November at 8:35. He had a bunny seizure and died wrapped in my blanket where I had been trying to keep him warm and comfortable. I buried him under a lemon tree wrapped in his same blanket and together with a few of his favourite things:  a delicious candle, a rubber teething  ring, a bit of a box and a carrot he had partially nibbled at .

In a previous post I had mentioned that Ozzy was an arsehole. Well, he wasn’t just any old arsehole. He was the best kind of arsehole a boy who loved rabbits could be.

Ozzy eating a balloon

Ozzy’s Greatest Hits

"On the count of 3, human, you will awake and then feed me large handfuls of herbs" 

• Ozzy peed on me the day I got him. Then I hugged him and he wouldn't stop staring at me.
• Once Ozzy just straight up ate a candle. 
• Ozzy burrowed into the vinyl at the back of my sofa leaving a huge gaping hole which I couldn't see until I moved my sofa away from the wall.
• Ozzy jumped to the 5th section of my bookshelf and ate a few of my Deadpool comics and my Civil War collection.
• Ozzy uprooted my cactus and spread the soil all over the floor/dining table.
• Ozzy tried eating a balloon once.  He looked  and sounded like Maggie Simpson.

• Ozzy jumped really high from sitting position  and then fell flat on the floor, stretching his legs behind him. (I called this his ploop manoeuvre, or simply “ploop”)
• Once I fell asleep without putting Ozzy away in his enclosure and he woke me up by doing a ploop on my chest.
• Ozzy had a need for speed. He would race from one end of my apartment to the other and once missed the carpet sliding on the tile and banging his nose on a glass sliding door.
• Ozzy did not suffer fools gladly. He only thumped his foot at me in anger once. I was being a prick at the time.
• Ozzy knew that the fridge being opened was a good sign for his belly.
• He had the naughtiest looking face and would find something new to drive you crazy with each day just because.
• Ozzy watched the news on TV once, but I don’t think the affairs of humans weigh heavy on the mind of rabbitkind. He soon went back to nibbling my sofa and TV cables
• Ozzy nibbled and damaged my sisters 21^st birthday party banner on the morning of the party. I told her, only a really clever rabbit would have known to nibble only around the edges.

.

Ozymandias and Spock have become evil

Since Ozzy had bonded with my sister's rabbit, Spock, we had to find another rabbit before Spock sunk into depression. I didn't want to hear of another rabbit that wasn't Ozzy, so my sister ended up getting this lump of nonsense here without my help:

Codename: "Pudu"

Can he truly live up to the the name that Ozymandias has made for himself in my house?

Perhaps he just might.

"Ozymandias" by Percy Bysse Shelley:

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: `Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear -
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Ozzy certainly made a colossal wreck of my sofa, that's for damn sure. Good choice of name, I think, and part well played by rabbit. 

Goodbye Ozymandias, you naughty lovable shit angel! Rabbits everywhere have lost their king, but my ruined sofa will forever bear testimony to your greatness! I will miss you my friend.

RB