SIR,

Hi I'm replying to a message left by someone in Wyefield Close, Monmouth, enquiring if anyone knows what happened to a white rabbit that visited his garden.

Well the rabbit was called Max and he belonged to my seven year old daughter Bethany. When she was three I took her into a pet shop in Abergavenny to look at the animals and noticed that some of the bigger rabbits were bullying a tiny white rabbit no bigger then the palm of my hand.

I told the shop assistant who hadn't seemed to notice but wasn't surprised as the other rabbits were twice the size of him. Not intending to purchase a pet, I took him anyway, out of sympathy. I was told he was a Dwarf breed, which was why he was so small. My daughter was thrilled and we settled him into his new cage, but every morning he would be gone despite our efforts to keep him in his cage.

He would chew through everything even the metal bars. We would always find him in our bottom garden eating the grass. Time went by and he grew and grew and grew, certainly no Dwarf, he fended off every cat, dog or human that would go near him, except me.

I would shake the food bag every night at 6pm and he would sprint up to the shed to be fed and watered. I would then watch him disappear down the burrow he made in my bank, he always looked fit and healthy when I checked him over at feeding time and always returned every night. At Christmas, Easter, in the snow he always returned.

Sometimes I would get several calls through the week at around 10pm from neighbours, fretting that they saw Max at the top of my estate or in someone's garden but they could never catch him, they soon got the message to leave him be as he was enjoying himself.

A lot of the residents would be lucky enough to have Max visit them and one even mentioned that he loved bread!  My friends would often see him sitting in his favourite alleyway while they walked their dogs.

Then one night four years on Max didn't return. I tried not to fret as my daughter searched the garden to no avail, the next day a lady that regularly walked her dogs down Max's favourite alley found him asleep under a hedge.

My children came with me to retrieve him and could not find a mark on him, he was the beautiful white colour he had always been.

We buried him in his burrow at home on the same day that we had our community fete, it seemed fitting as Max brought so many people together, especially to my door at 10pm! We miss him a lot and my daughter still looks for him, she told me he will now become the Easter bunny and is anxious to search for him at Easter, who knows!!

Tracey Aitken

(Monmouth)