bunny killer

I'm at my friend Mathilde's for lunch and we are sitting outside in the autumn sunshine having just eaten a delicious rabbit stew. Biff has been running around the courtyard, happily playing football by himself (very funny to watch) and benefiting from little morsels of rabbit passed down from the table by the other guests.

But suddenly I notice that he has disappeared. And just as suddenly there is a horrible, anguished wail from behind a storage/workshed area, followed by a massive kerfuffle and the sound of things falling. Mathilde jumps to her feet.

'Gabriel's rabbit!' she cries, pulling aside the large artists' canvases stacked in front of a wire gate. And then: 'Don't look!'

I do look, perching on a large pile of coiled rope to peer through into the darkness, where Mathilde is holding up the dead white rabbit that belonged to her 11 year old son.

'Oh my god!' I say, shocked but somehow not shocked, as it all happened so quickly. The contrast between the big white fluffy bunny and my villainous black dog couldn't be more striking.

Mercifully, he has killed the rabbit outright, by going for its neck and presumably, shaking it to death.

'Biff!' I shout. 'Come here, now!" and he eventually slinks out from under the wire gate. I deliver two slaps to his rump, which I hate myself for doing, but it seems appropriate in the circumstances.

Then, after profuse apologies - there are no etiquette books that tell you how to exit gracefully from such a situation - I bundle my young bunny killer into the car and we both drive home in disgrace.

I can't quite reconcile the fact that my darling boy, with his adorable teddy bear features, has committed such a brutal act.

Later Mathilde sends me a charming email. 'Afterwards, Gabriel told me that he does not want to play with Biff anymore,' she writes. 'But then he smiled and said that he was only joking.'

She tells me that Gabriel wasn't very attached to the rabbit - he is more attached to his cats - and anyway he has other things on his mind as he has a romantic assignation at the swimming pool tomorrow with a little girl called Eloise.'

Later, I recount the story to Travis who is horrified and declares that he will refer to Biff as 'The Black-Eyed Bunny Killer' from now on.

'I like to think that any dog of mine would have sniffed that rabbit and played with it a bit, but no more,' he says, before suggesting that I need to start being a little firmer with Biff.

And so this evening (while waiting for Luis to arrive) I watch the Dog Whisperer. By weird synchronicity I turn on the TV at the exact moment that is he is dangling a bunny rabbit in front of the nostrils of a pit-bull like dog.

Unfortunately, I've missed the crucial run-up to this and am not sure how, short of tranquilisers, he got the pit bull like dog to lie on the ground and look so disinterested in the bunny.

But one thing is for sure: I don't think I'm going to be trying this at home anytime soon.