Just a few hours after filing last week’s column about the comical gender-bending adventures of my daughter’s bunny, Ahava, I went to the rabbit cage to see if there was enough food and water.

For those of you who missed last week’s saga, I’ll review: We took home the kindergarten class rabbit for the summer and discovered — a little too late — that the adorable, fluffy, female Ahava was actually quite the lady’s man. After buying two female rabbits that we thought would keep “her” company, Ahava’s reaction to “her” new friends was memorable — only overshadowed by the excitement generated the following day when one of the new female bunnies gave birth to two rabbits, Pinky and Shimon.

So, I wasn’t just checking to make sure there was food and water: I also wanted to see how the babies, just a few days old, were faring. I was especially concerned for Pinky, who was significantly smaller than Shimon.

But Pinky was nowhere to be seen. Let me not belabor this part of the story, because it isn’t pretty:

Pinky was dead.

It took me a little while to figure this out, because he wasn’t lying there dead. He was gone. I poked around the cage. I dug a little harder. I looked outside the cage. Could he have fallen through the bars?

After a quick search on the Web, I discovered that the mother rabbit, stressed in her new environment, had — get this — eaten Pinky. How exactly do you explain that to young children?

Fortunately, my girls were out, so the explaining began with my boys, who had claimed the baby bunnies as their own. Jacob’s rabbit was Shimon and Josh’s was (R.I.P.) Pinky.

“Guys,” I began, “I have some bad news.”

This got their attention.

“Pinky’s dead,” I said matter-of-factly.

Josh, 7, looked gloomy.

“Is Shimon alive?” Jacob, 9, asked a little too gleefully.

“Yes,” I said with an edge that suggested that gloating at this moment was out of the question.

He was alive, but not for long. The next day, Shimon shared the same fate as Pinky.

“Guess what, Jacob,” I said sadly. “Shimon’s missing.”

At Jacob’s insistence, I sifted through the rabbit cage looking for proof that Shimon was really dead. A little bone? A piece of fur? Nothing.

The boys were more grossed out than sad.

“That just isn’t right,” Jacob said, grimacing at the thought of a mother rabbit eating her babies.

I dreaded telling Kira and Talia — especially because Kira’s goldfish had just gotten stuck in the filter that morning, and had also met an untimely end.

When I gave the girls the news, they understandably wanted proof, which I couldn’t supply. But when the boys confirmed the facts for them, they seemed content that the baby rabbits were, in fact, dead.

“The mother ate them?” Kira asked in disbelief.

She looked like she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. As much as it worried me that her reaction might be to laugh, I certainly didn’t want to make more of the situation than need be. She and Talia quickly returned to feeding carrots and broccoli to the adult rabbits, running around after them, and trying to pick them up.

It occurred to me that the rabbits and fish, at this point, were serving a purpose beyond entertainment. Maybe I was just searching for the silver lining. But it seemed that all these pets, and all these deaths, were a trial run for the facts of life.

As if there weren’t already enough creatures to take care of in our house, my husband, David, then asked me if it was all right to buy Jacob a bird.

“I need a pet of my own,” Jacob said, pleadingly.

I don’t remember exactly what I said in response, but I think it was something like “Whatever.” Whatever, as in, “Are you out of your mind?”

David and Jacob must have interpreted my response to mean “Sure,” because one night last week, I came home to find Jacob, Josh, and David hovering around the new parakeet, Percy — named for their favorite South African rugby player, Percy Montgomery.

Jacob, looking enormously satisfied, told me how he carefully selected Percy because he seemed the calmest of all the parakeets at the pet store.

“Jacob, you have to spend a lot of time with him in the next couple months, training him so that he sits on your shoulder and says a few words,” I said.

Jacob was silent and looked contemplative.

“How long do birds live?” he asked. I knew exactly what he was thinking. Was Percy going to live long enough to make the investment worthwhile?

It turns out that the average life expectancy of a parakeet is 12-14 years. This means that Jacob will be more than 20 years old when Percy kicks the bucket.

That’s assuming that the rabbits don’t get a mouthful of Percy anytime soon.

sarasberman@aol.com