Nip and tuck at the fair
Aug. 12—Sofie Kaaen opens her hand to reveal a half-inch cut on her palm. The thin slice is still red, a wound inflicted just minutes earlier.
While the wound isn't the result of a battle with a recent competitor, Kaaen is, at this moment, a champion.
Kaaen, 15, won overall grand champion of the rabbit showmanship at the Baker County Fair Wednesday morning, Aug. 10 at the Baker County Events Center.
Her wound was the product of a mistaken leporid identity and a rabbit's defensive reaction to her foreign touch.
About halfway through the final round of Wednesday's rabbit show competition, judge Patrisha Malby did something unexpected — she asked the contestants to switch rabbits.
"A good handler should be able to handle any bunny," Malby said.
She added, "I want to see how they handle something that isn't their own."
In prior rounds, Malby had asked contestants an assortment of questions and assigned different tasks to see how well the kids handled their rabbits.
Kaaen, for example, won the intermediate division round after she explained to Malby that a 30-day quarantine is necessary for any new rabbits acquired in order to prevent the spread of RHDV2 virus, a hemorrhagic disease in rabbits.
In that round, she also made sure, when asked to hoist her Holland Lop by the skin around its neck, not to grab any part of the ears — which could break or be damaged when grabbed.
Kaaen performed a health check of her rabbit — checking the ears for damage, the eyes for blindness, the nose for discharge, the teeth for defects, the toenails for chips, the hocks for sores, the fur for fleas, the belly for swelling — and also checked the sex and straightened the tail.
But that was all with her own Holland Lop rabbit.
Now, Malby was asking Kaaen to handle her competitor Chase Myatt's larger Californian rabbit. Kaaen said that when she is asked to switch rabbits, she "just hopes they have a good temperament."
In this case, she was in luck — Kaaen knew what to expect out of this particular bunny.
"It was nice because I have watched him handle (that rabbit) before," Kaaen said of Myatt.
She scooped it up with ease.
Meanwhile, on the end of the show table, a particularly rambunctious brown rex rabbit was giving Tyler Myatt, 11, who would win overall reserve champion, some trouble by kicking and squirming as he attempted to corral it.
It even nipped him, he said.
And it was apparent that judge Malby wanted all the contestants to have a turn handling the squirrely ball of fur.
She wasn't judging based on how energetic the rabbits were, she said.
"What I'm looking at is how gentle you are."
But that troublesome brown rex rabbit wasn't supposed to be on the show table in the first place.
Tyler Myatt said that before the round, contestant Skye Smith accidentally grabbed the rabbit from its pen not knowing it was a different rabbit from the one she had just handled when she won the grand champion award in the senior round — although the two looked the same. The one she brought to the table was much harder to handle.
At this point in the contest, Kaaen was the only contestant who hadn't handled the brown rex.
Malby instructed her to do so.
And when Kaaen cradled the bunny, it bit her in the palm, its teeth puncturing her skin.
Either the wound didn't hurt or she didn't show it — she handled it well enough to earn her the award of grand champion. After the biting, she went on to handle her own rabbit again and answer a few more critical questions, composure unwavering.
"It's satisfying to win," Kaaen said.
