A couple of weeks ago, I arrived home to find a baby bunny rescued from a cat by a woman I know and brought to my house by a family member who intended to nurture it for a little while before releasing it back to nature.

The bunny, who had seven names because no one could agree on one, stayed on my screened-in porch in a kitty carrier, but had hours of exercise each day running across the outdoor rug and between the chairs, and sometimes hiding among the house plants moved out there for the summer.

I liked BunRabRunaroundJack, but its being here got old, as I was anxious for it to grow up so it could join bun reality. I would much rather have it scarf up my black-eyed Susan petals and nibble free-range lettuce instead of eating human offerings of store-bought carrot tops and processed bunny kibbles, organic though they may be.

That's kind of how I felt about the young Michael Jackson. A little caged boy who got to go out for precious moments and who, as a young child, practiced singing "ABC" over and over again, he told the press, as insisted upon by his stern, didactic father, while his real desire was to get off the screened-in porch (those are my words) and play on the swings with the children who were allowed the gift of childhood.

BunRab ate voraciously, and when he was "free" on the porch, his little droppings reminded us what grass is really for. Grass hides his natural fertilizer, giving back to the earth and, hence, the universe. Jackson ate sparingly, and when he was "free," he seemed to eat less, almost as if trying to disappear into his own shadow. He leaves the universe his creative genius, his music and memories of him pale and in pain.

I loved Michael Jackson, who, last week, died a very old 50. I abhorred that young boys slept in his bed and that he saw absolutely nothing wrong about that. When that fact was revealed during a TV interview a few years ago, a woman who had no children challenged me, saying that she saw nothing wrong with Jackson's peccadillo, as Jackson said that the bed-sharing was done "in purity."

I challenged her back. If he were not the larger-than-life Michael Jackson, creator of the moonwalk and "Thriller," but was a lawyer, say, or a store clerk or an office worker or a plumber having 12-year-old boys sleep in his bed, would that be OK? She answered no.

BunRab ran from corner to corner, and it was clear he was looking for a way out. But at the end of the day, as the nights fell, he voluntarily went back into his cage. If he could talk, I wondered if he might have suffered from Stockholm Syndrome, relating to his family of captors as if we were friends in order to stay alive. Or did he truly love us and his ready-made food?

I've read that Michael Jackson kept his friends to a minimum, trusting few and firing many, some of whom he rehired and refired. To live a life where you don't trust the people closest to you defines pain. And how does it feel to be a perpetual boy in a grownup's body, a man no one taught to be a man? Where were his tribe, his cohorts, who should have been giving him guidance? What would have happened if celebrity had escaped him? Would he still be odd, pale and thin? Would he have been the "funny uncle" most families have?

We only had BunRab for a week. He escaped and now lives in my yard. With luck, Jacko (I've changed his name again) will mature into a nice big bunny with a broad hop.

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