This morning, we experienced one of many families' biggest fears. We were awoken at 2am by our oldest son screaming our pole shed/rabbit barn was on fire. Being mostly asleep, we frantically gathered ourselves and raced outside to find it already completely gone. The entire building was completely engulfed, and the roof had already collapsed. The fire company was setting up their hoses and starting to spray down the fire. Ourselves and our children couldn't do anything but watch in complete horror.

This wasn't just any outbuilding; it housed our 9-year-old daughter's show rabbits (Holland Lops to be exact), along with a handful of New Zealands, guinea pigs, and one lone Netherland Dwarf that belonged to our youngest son. We lost in total 45 adult rabbits and over 35 under 8-week-old babies. Our daughter has purchased most of the rabbits (from all over the country), cages, supplies, etc., herself and has shown them throughout PA, NY, and MD. To say she is devastated is an understatement, but is there a way to explain to a 9-year-old who is wise beyond her years what happened and try to answer her when she keeps asking, "Why did this have to happen to her?" and on Christmas morning at that. Those bunnies were pets, and anyone who follows our rabbitry Facebook can see that. We spend countless hours just spending time with them, playing with them, letting them out for exercise, etc. The loss is huge, and we are trying to come to terms with what happened and get past how they suffered and we were unable to save them.

Thankfully, our homeowners' insurance will cover the building itself and hopefully some of the items in the building. (The back half was rabbits, and the front was normal home items such as a generator, tools, etc.) We are hoping to be able to raise money to give to Madilynn to be able to start over once we can have the building rebuilt. She has put an unimaginable amount of blood, sweat, and tears into her bunnies, and to lose them in such a cruel way has been beyond awful. We are not asking for any money toward the structure or anything non-bunny related, but she had over $20,000 invested, so any little bit helps. All money raised will be put in her savings account and invested back into her bunnies once the building is finished.

Pictures are from the damage before we have been really able to get in and see if anything is salvageable (many have asked, no, the wood stove was not lit, and it had a chimney; the roof came down, taking it down with it, and the firefighters threw it out in the yard getting the fire out), but the fire was electrical.