Please forgive me if I'm less than sympathetic to the 9-year-old girl who is accused of going into a neighbor's house to steal a child's pet rabbit and grab a fistful of cash.
I'm also less than outraged that the cops came, picked her up for burglary, then kept an eye on her in the rearview mirror of the patrol car on the way to the juvenile assessment center.
See, I'm coming from the point of view of a former bunny rabbit owner (I came close to earning a Girl Scout badge in rabbit raising but didn't want to sell the offspring to an unknown fate) and a person who was the victim of juvenile burglars three decades ago.
No, rabbits are not cuddly bedfellows like cats or dogs, but mine were more responsive than, say, the turtles, chameleons and hamsters that I raised and loved.
Flopsy, Mopsy and Cottontail would come when called (okay, they knew the call came with a coffee can full of rabbit food), sit quietly as I stroked their soft fur and look plaintively into my eyes when I told them how mean my teacher had been to me that day for gazing out of the window during arithmetic class.
If someone had stolen my rabbits, it wouldn't have hurt any less than if they had taken my Siamese cat Scheherazade, who talked all night, or Snowball, my chow chow.
My burglars, though they were preteens, were no less disturbing than if they had been, say, 13 and 14. Someone had come into my space while I was away from home, broken my Old Regulator wall clock, taken a few small items and left a mess in my bathroom. It was creepy and alarming and quite frightening for me, especially because my husband traveled a lot and I was often home alone with my preschool son.
The news story notes that the child accused of being a rabbit thief "has been involved in other incidents." It notes that the mother has been in trouble with the law twice before.
This looks like a child with problems that a troubled parent apparently has not been addressing, a child who needs immediate help.
As for taking the incident to the state attorney, I once did that with someone who wrote a bad check, only to wait more than six months to learn that nothing had been done about it. Something such as a stolen rabbit and a small amount of money won't be a priority issue in an office understandably more concerned with violent crimes.
This child, like so many others, could linger for ages waiting for something to happen. The immediate shock of riding in a patrol car may be just what she needs to realize that her current path is less than desirable.
What will likely happen, though, is public outrage over the arrest of a 9-year-old - I've already overheard several people expressing such feelings - and people who know only a tiny part of the story excoriating law enforcement officers for just, well, following the law.
I only hope this child isn't made into a martyr with the implied message that what she did was okay and that what the mother of the victim who called the police did was bad.
