There I was, having an afternoon nana-nap in my chair, because some afternoons I get extremely tired, and my sister yells: “Nova’s out!”

I immediately wake up and leaped up out of my chair and headed to the door. My feet weren’t working properly and the rug on the floor decided to go the opposite direction to the way I was going.

I hit the floor with the loudest bang. I landed on my front, but more on my right side. My thumb hurt, my knees hurt, my right foot hurt… My middle hurt… it felt like I was winded, but I could still breathe.

I leaped up off the floor and raced outside.

Nova was bouncing around the outside of the pen wondering why we were trying to round her up and get her back in the pen.

She’s such a good girl, she happily bounced back to the part of the fence where she had gotten out. It had lifted up because the wind had caught the shade cloth and it had pulled the pegs out of the ground. She was back in the pen.

I couldn’t see Buttons anywhere. He wasn’t in a pipe, he wasn’t under the fallen shade cloth… he was gone. Nowhere.

“Where’s Buttons?” I called out. “He’s nowhere.” My family immediately went to look for him. We knew he wouldn’t go far. But the problem was, next door is a huge trash pile and he might have got caught in there.

He wasn’t anywhere. My heart sank. I don’t want to lose Buttons.

“Buttons, where are you?” I called out. I knew that we used to play “Where’s Buttons?” where he would hide and then pop his head out for me to see him, and I’d say “There you are.” I was secretly hoping that that game would prove to be a good thing.

We looked around the garden. He was no where. We looked around the shed, in the shed, around the cars… nowhere.

“Buttons, where are you?”

Then I saw him. Standing as high as he could possibly stretch on the top of the largest most precarious garbage pile that was covered with a torn blue tarp. He was letting me know he was there. His large black ears acted like antennas aiding his meerkat pose.

He was so happy when I saw him. His behaviour was as though he was trying to call out, but he couldn’t. He would have if he had a voice.

The next thing we had do to was get him off the garbage pile. To set the picture, the pile was made of old rotten wooden sheets, bricks, rusty nails, pipes, everything that is dangerous. The pile was about a metre high and about 30cm from our fence.

“He’s on the trash pile,” I called out to my family members who were looking for him.

Buttons wanted to jump down and come to me, but the pile was too close to the fence and he couldn’t measure the jump, there wouldn’t be enough space. He became worried that he couldn’t come to me. He started hopping across the top of the pile. I was worried that he would hurt himself or get bitten by a spider, or worse, a section of the rotten wood collapses and he gets stuck in a gap between the trash.

My sister climbed on the pile. The wood creaked and bent. She had to keep her footing steady, which was hard to do.

Buttons went to her. Then he laid down in a sploot. He was happy that we found him and we were having fun with him on his pile of trash.

I immediately climbed the wire fence and headed to the trash pile. By that time my sister had picked Buttons up. He squeaked and wriggled but she wasn’t going to let him go. She handed him to me and he settled down when he realised he was safe.

I put him back with Nova and they were happy to see each other again. It was then that we realised that Nova was trying to tell us where Buttons was. She was looking in his direction all that time.

They were home and safe. But they both went over to the part of the fence that had lifted up and checked it out. Of course it had been fixed, but they had to see it for themselves.

It wasn’t until later that evening that I realised that my body was damaged. My thumb had a bruise that covered exactly half of it, my foot had a bruise near my little toe… but worst of all, was the pain in my middle. I couldn’t bend, breathe, laugh, live. I later found out that I had two fractured ribs, fractured from my sternum down on a diagonal to my hip. The third rib was bruised. I used to wonder what it was like to have broken ribs, and how silly that sounded. Now I wish that I never even thought about it.

So this stuffed me up for a long time. I couldn’t pick the bunnies up, pat them, feed them, give them water, clean them. I was useless. But they forgave me, especially when I could pat them after a few weeks.

I doubt much more will happen this month, but we will see.