The Furry Ungendered

As a present for my birthday, my mother very sweetly sent me an old friend in a squishy padded envelope: Carrots, the quite adorable small white rabbit that you can see in the picture. Perhaps as a result of the rigours of the transatlantic journey, Carrots now has a rakish look: one ear back, the other forward. I certainly don’t remember the ears that way.

There’s another thing I don’t remember, and it’s quite embarrassing. I’m pretty sure, but only pretty sure, that Carrots is a she, and not a he. A. thinks this is typical of the apparently large gaps in my memory of childhood. Though it’s true that there do indeed seem to be large gaps, I’m not sure about this one. I mean, wasn’t Carrots always just Carrots? Carrots’s Carrotsishness would seem to entirely trump any trivial concerns about gender. Besides, perhaps Carrots’s gender is neither male nor female, but merely: cute.