There were three bunnies and a chicken coop in pieces in my living room when I wondered if I’d made an unforced error.  

I’d been in the market for an outdoor pet for about a week and a half.

My first plan was to get a teacup pig. If you’re unclear about the appeal of owning a mini pig, I encourage you to look up a picture of one wearing a cowboy hat.

However, after realizing a teacup pig doesn’t stay teacup-sized, I’d have to buy it a plane ticket because the ones I liked were in the south, and farm animals are frowned upon in our neighborhood, I pivoted to Plan B — bunnies — which would be a more manageable outdoor pet for where we lived.

Compared to flying a piglet to our home and nervously watching it grow to be a hundred-plus pounds, getting rabbits already seemed like a good decision.

The following few days were lost in a rabbit hole of internet searches for available bunnies.

I scoured the listings for rabbits, admiring the wide array of breeds, some of which were small and fluffy, some huge and plush, some with ears up and others with ears flopped over.

With the scare of owning a huge outdoor pet fresh in my mind, I looked for rabbits that would stay small. And then, I found them: a sweet mixed litter from diminutive stock who also had tiny price tags.

It was the low cost that first caught my eye. A good deal is the quickest way to my heart.

But like my inexpensive car that I fell in love with online before finding out in person that it had a work light attached on top of it, I wondered if my discount bunnies would also be somehow not quite right.

They were a mix of breeds that had upright ears and floppy ears.

Would the bunnies have something in between, like one ear up and one down, or ears that split the difference by sticking straight out like helicopter blades?  

As I’m wont to do, I stuffed down my concerns, focusing instead on how much money I was saving.

I also have major FOMO when it comes to sales, so I was determined to act quickly.

Did I have food and gear ready to welcome them into my home? Definitely not.

Did I have the next day off to gather up all the supplies, buy the bunnies from the owner, and be home by the time school got out? Absolutely.

The next morning, with the clock ticking, I greeted an associate right when the pet store opened and asked her to give me the rundown of everything I needed to take care of rabbits.

Within minutes, my cart was full of bunny food, hay, bowls, litter pellets, and a box, a grooming kit, toys, a play pen, and a carrier.

I checked out, avoiding looking too closely at the receipt.

Whether I was actually saving money now was in question, but I loaded the haul into the car and headed out to pick up our bunnies.

In the meantime, my responsible children were researching how to care for rabbits.

Bunnies acquired and quietly squealed over after school, our family got to work getting them comfortable, fed, watered, named, and interacted with in a soothing way — we whispered instructions, directions, and warnings to each other while setting up their things so the bunnies didn’t catch on that they had made the switch from a seasoned rabbit raiser to newbie bunny owners.

We watched in delight as they hopped around their new temporary house.

They were absolutely adorable, though two of them did have ears that didn’t look like they had been put on the right way. We loved them anyway.

After days of constantly monitoring the rabbits to make sure they were happy, the hutch arrived.

We brought the bunnies inside as they awaited their new upgraded abode.

I looked around the living room, at the bunnies and the pieces of the hutch strewn about, tallying future costs and work involved in owning rabbits, and worried I had miscalculated by getting pets.

But seeing the joy these tiny fluffy creatures have already brought to my family and how quickly they’ve stepped up to provide good care to them has been well worth the price — especially when I don’t look at the receipts too carefully.

“Dear Father,

Hear and bless your beasts and singing birds

And guard with care and tenderness  

Small things that have no words. Amen.”

— Margaret Wise Brown