In which they encounter a bunny waiting for a tram

by Marie

We weren’t really zedding when this happened but we thought you would enjoy it, dear readers.

We were coming out of the Lowry Theatre, having watched His Dark Materials which was really very good.

I always feel strange leaving the Lowry. It is the job of theatres and cinemas to transport you to other worlds and I always get a little jolt when I return to the normality of the busy streets. The Lowry, itself looking like it has landed from space, spits you out onto Salford Quays, a weird slightly sterile environment with futuristic buildings and few signs of human habitation. It’s a place that that has been designed but not yet lived in.

We walked over the ship bridge, remarking that the lower decks would be a great place to launch a remote controlled boat. Ship bridge? I hear you ask. Well this isn’t the point of the story but it is a pleasing diversion: The Detroit Bridge’s original home and function was to allow rail access to Trafford Park but was moved to it’s present location 1988. The move required its flotation down the canal by pontoons and this required its registration as a ship. This enables me to to be factually correct when I tell people, “this bridge, it’s a ship, this bridge is” and it pleases me to do so.

We arrived at the tram stop with time to think about running for the tram but didn’t (as my knee is still sore from last week’s urban adventure). It was going to Special, anyway and we couldn’t decide if we wanted to go to special. Many trams in the city centre are going to special these days which is fair enough but didn’t help my feeling that I wasn’t quite back in my own world yet.

Waiting on the tram platform, I saw a small dark shape scampering across the road, I pointed. “An animal of some sort, a rabbit or a rat or something”
“Rabbit!” Liam scoffed “far more likely to be a rat”
“Suppose” I said shrugging, What’s the statistic, never more than 10 feet from a rat in the city “…still there tho, see that dark shape”
“Shall I sneak up on it?” Liam wondered. I encouraged this and kept watch for the tram.
Moments later Liam is back pointing and gesturing enthusiastically. “did you see that, did you see that?”
I hesitate, not wanting to admit I’d been too busy thinking how sad the play was, to watch him sneak up on a rodent.
“Wabbit!” he announces incredulously. “A wabbit! What’s it doing round here? it was quite a nonchalant rabbit, let me get quite close but then ran off. Wabbit”

We sit and wait for the tram discussing where our furry friend might be living in the urban moonscape that is Salford Quays. “They like sandy soil to burrow in, there’s nowhere round here that’s rabbit friendly. What on earth made you think it was a rabbit from first glance?”
“it just had a.. dunno..sort of… wabbitty.. way of moving.” I finish feebly before jumping up. “there it is!”

We both creep away from the tram stop, me trying to get my cameraphone to come back on. Night mode, cameraphone, don’t make me laugh. Can’t take a pic of a rabbit when it is sat a metre away from you, twitching its ears, nonchalantly eating the grass that grows between tram tracks. Eating the grass that grows in between tram tracks! is there no better place for you to live, my furry friend? Our wabbit scampers off under a gate and sits beside a fence watching us watching it for quite a while. We worry in case our wabbit is someone’s escaped pet but we conclude that from it small size and leanness it looks less like a hutch dwelling wabbit and more like an urban – live by its wits – sort of a wabbit. Eventually it disappears into some wastleland – wasteland we had already observed someone had gone to trouble of fencing in and putting electric wiring on the top of the fence. Maybe it’s just really important we leave the rabbits alone.

We sit and discuss whether wabbits normally live in urban areas and whether anyone will believe us. Liam says he is going to google “urban rabbit” when he gets in. “You are going to find a myspace account belonging to hairy young men making nasty noises with guitars, I fear” Some lights appear. “Here’s our twam” announces Liam and I wonder how long before the bunnification of our speech patterns will wear off.

Back on the internet. I’m no wiser about whether it’s common for rabbits to live in urban areas, except they do hang about by the Arc de Triomphe, they live on roundabouts in Gloucestershire and they burrow under bookshops in inverness

I think you will agree, this is not the most bunny friendly sort of place:

The events in this post take place on page 93. Bunnies can be spotted and trams caught from square F5, the lowry can be visited in square E6