Shopping for pet treats requires a certain amount of willful ignorance. Most people are perfectly comfortable tossing a bag of chicken-flavored something into the cart without spending too much time contemplating how the chicken became the something. Every once in a while, though, a product makes that mental separation considerably harder.

One pet store employee learned this firsthand while helping a customer find something new and exciting for her cat.

The usual suggestions weren’t doing it. Greenies? No. Tube treats? Not quite. Freeze-dried options? Apparently still not exciting enough. So the employee decided to introduce her to a favorite in their own household: dehydrated rabbit ears.

Admittedly, that’s the kind of pet treat whose ingredient list probably doesn’t require much explanation. The employee grabbed one, handed it over and began explaining how much their own cats and dogs enjoy playing with and eating them. Then the customer realized what she was holding.

What followed was not a polite “no thank you,” a mildly horrified expression or even a request to see something significantly less anatomically identifiable. Instead, she dropped the ear, burst into tears and arrived at a conclusion about the rabbit-ear supply chain that nobody involved could have possibly anticipated.

All those bunnies…

I work at a Pet Food store that mostly sells food and accessories for dogs and cats, but we have a small animal food section as well.

A few weeks ago, and woman came in, looking for a new fun treat to give to her cat, as most customers do.

I showed her a few regular treat options (greenies, tube treats freeze dried), none of which seemed interested in.

All seems well so far…

So, I led her over to one of my cat’s (and dog’s) favourite treats. Dehydrated Rabbit Ears.

I picked one up from the bin, telling her about how much my pets love to play with, and eat them, and handed it to her.

As soon as it’s in her hand, she drops it, and screams “Oh my god! It’s real!”

Of course it is, ma’am…

She drops the ear, and starts sobbing uncontrollably.

In complete hysterics, this woman starts yelling at me, “How could you people do something like this?! You mean to tell me there are all these bunnies hopping around with no ears?!”

She left, in tears.

People found the interaction hilarious, but there was also something almost impressively innocent about the customer’s immediate assumption. She apparently understood that the rabbit ear was real; the part she couldn’t comprehend was what had happened to the rabbit attached to it.

Unfortunately, her brain landed on perhaps the most upsetting possible explanation: somewhere, there must be a population of perfectly healthy bunnies hopping around after having their ears removed solely to produce pet treats.

That’s obviously not how animal-based pet treats are generally sourced, and commenters pointed out that products like ears are typically byproducts of animals already processed for meat rather than the result of someone harvesting one body part and sending the animal merrily on its way. If anything, using more of an animal that has already been slaughtered can reduce waste.

Still, it’s easy to understand why a recognizable body part might hit differently than a nugget in a treat bag. Plenty of people happily feed their pets chicken, beef or rabbit while preferring not to encounter anything that still looks quite so much like its original owner.

The employee couldn’t have predicted that reaction, especially after the customer specifically asked for a fun new treat and rejected the more conventional options. A dehydrated rabbit ear may not have been her idea of fun, but handing her a product sold in a pet store certainly wasn’t an act of cruelty.

Hopefully someone eventually explained the situation to her, because imagining an entire countryside filled with earless rabbits is significantly more disturbing than the reality.

This person is cracking up.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about an employer who has an unexpectedly hard time retrieving a company vehicle from a fired employee.

This person has been there before.

And this person understands the hype.

Somewhere, this woman is still picturing hundreds of perfectly healthy bunnies hopping around wondering where their ears went.