Usagi was my first bunny. Some time back I became interested in the Japanese anime character Sailor Moon. Her alter-ego is an ordinary schoolgirl named Usagi, which means "Bunny" in Japanese. This is how Usagi was named and how I myself took on the alter-ego of Usagi_Chan. Chan is simply a title rather like "Sir" or "Miss."
For a long time I felt that I could never love Thumper and Pegasus as I loved Usagi. In a sense I sort of resented them for a while. That changed. Pegasus and Thumper now hold a very special place in my heart. Though I still love and miss my Usagi, I would be heartbroken if anything happened to Thumper or Pegasus. I guess what hurts most about Usagi is that he was hardly grown, only a bit over a year old. For Thumper and Pegasus I hope to see each live a full life. Thumper is now five and Pegasus is three. Thumper came with her name but I renamed Pegasus after another Sailor Moon character, a winged unicorn which he often resembles when he raises one ear, as he often does.
Usagi, my beloved bunny has a legacy. I learned a lot from him about what to do and what not to do. I have studied a lot about bunnies and I volunteer at the SPCA every Saturday and work with their bunnies and educate potential adopters about bunnies. I have learned that bunnies respond to clicker training so I started training mine then later, the SPCA bunnies. That lead to training other SPCA volunteers to do clicker-training. This enriches the volunteers, the bunnies and tends to make them more adoptable as well as demonstrating that bunnies are intelligent.
Without Usagi, I would not have learned as much as I have. Though I now have Thumper and Pegasus who are also immensely loved, I will never stop loving and missing Usagi. There's something special about a first-love or a first bunny. I still can't see a picture of him without my eyes filling with tears.
Usagi_Chan