I have a few more amusing (to me!) vet clinic stories. Please bear with me for a few more days, since, as you can imagine, I don’t feel like doing any serious research right now. I must say, though, that things are going very well: Piccolo is eating and drinking again (and dumping toy balls on our bed at night), and tonight I am giving Puzzola her last shot of antibiotics. Life is good…but we need a few more days to recover from THE big scare.

Before I start telling today’s story, I should mention that there were other pets recovering from various ailments in Piccolo and Ciccio’s room at the clinic—two or three turtles, two black rabbits, one white and brown rabbit, two teeny tiny kittens, a German Shepherd and even a dove…

Okay, now for my story. On Wednesday morning, as soon as Stefano and I arrived at the clinic, the head vet told us that Piccolo was well enough to go home. Yippee! While we were paying our bill and discussing Piccolo’s post-clinic care with the vet, a man and woman sauntered into the clinic, loudly announcing that they were there to visit their pet rabbit. The vet told them that they could go right inside and that he would join them as soon as he had finished with us. The couple disappeared around the corner…

We continued to discuss Piccolo’s antibiotics and whatnot with the vet. After about ten minutes, the man hurried back into the waiting room, exclaiming angrily: “Hey!!! That’s NOT my rabbit!!!” The vet looked up from his computer…completely taken aback, “Er, excuse me? Not…your…rabbit???”

“That’s right,” the man continued, “We’ve spent the last ten minutes looking at the wrong rabbit…we finally discovered that ours was in a different cage. We thought something was wrong, since our rabbit has a white mark on its chin, whereas the other one…” He broke off in mid sentence, probably realizing how silly it sounded.

The vet blinked, at a complete loss for words…while Stefano and I turned away from each other, trying very hard not to burst into laughter. Realizing that he would receive no sympathy from us, the rabbit man turned on his heels and disappeared from our view. The three of us exchanged smiles and sighed in unison: “Mahhh…!” (= “mah” is an Italian word expressing perplexity…similar to “beats me!” or “go figure!”).

Last night Stefano and I were still chuckling…

“That’s not my rabbit!!!” is now our favourite sentence in the world…