art by Kat Farrell
Bare Hands
I worked rotating weekend shifts in a laboratory rabbit facility, which meant coming in alone on Saturdays and Sundays to feed, monitor, and perform health checks on the rabbits in my care.
Weekend work was quieter than weekdays—fewer people, fewer conversations, fewer distractions. Just rows of cages, humming ventilation systems, and the constant awareness that these animals depended entirely on us.
One weekend during rounds, I found a female rabbit in moderate respiratory distress. She was lethargic, struggling to breathe, and clearly declining.
I no longer remember the exact protocol she had been assigned to or whether her condition was related to dystocia, artificial insemination, or another underlying complication. Those procedural details have faded with time. What has never faded was the condition she was in when I found her.
I called my supervisor immediately and explained that she was suffering. Since there was no veterinarian onsite, I recommended euthanasia to eliminate her pain. My supervisor agreed and asked whether I was capable of performing it myself. I said yes, because technically I was capable.
Emotionally, though, what I really wanted was to take her out of that building and drive her to an emergency veterinary hospital. I understood the system well enough to know that was never going to happen.
Before ending the call, my supervisor instructed me to use a restraint device during the euthanasia process. I had recently refused to work with this restrainer because I believed it caused rabbits unnecessary fear and restricted their breathing.
I said yes on the phone, but I already knew I was not going to use it.
Instead, I carried her to a quiet table away from the noise of the room. I wrapped her gently in a towel, burrito-style, so she could breathe comfortably and feel supported. I let her rest for a minute. Then I removed my gloves.
That was against protocol.
The rabbits were SPF barrier rabbits with no zoonotic risk; the gloves existed largely to protect them and maintain the integrity of the pharmaceutical environment. But in that moment, I could not bear the thought that the only touch she had ever known from a human would be through nitrile gloves.
So for the first time in her life, someone touched her with bare hands.
I stroked her head while administering the euthanasia solution and tried to make her final moments as peaceful as possible. After she passed, I pulled down my face mask and kissed her forehead.
Then I placed her body into a biohazard bag and carried her to the freezer where the other rabbit bodies were stored.
I remember standing there afterward, overwhelmed by the contradiction of it all: how deeply we could care while participating in a system that required emotional detachment to function. I prayed that whatever existed after death would be kinder to her than the world she had known here—that somewhere she was free, somewhere green, somewhere untouched by laboratories, procedures, restraints, or human hands.
This moment has stayed with me far longer than any protocol ever could. Years later, I still remember her breathing, the weight of her in my arms, the softness of her fur, and the way her body went still and her eyes slowly glazed over as she passed. In that quiet ending, there was a fleeting sense that compassion had to exist somewhere—even within a place built to suppress it.
Artist Statement
Kat Farrell
Reading this lab worker's story was heart-wrenching. I worked at an animal sanctuary and befriended rabbits that came from labs, just like this story. When reading this, I couldn't help but picture them in this situation, alone and in pain. The most powerful part of the story is what I wanted to depict: the lab worker going against all protocols to make the final moments of this rabbit's life something gentle and kind. The final act of taking off their gloves to touch them and hold them, to let them feel the warmth of a human hand. The detail of them taking their mask off to lean down to kiss the rabbit after ending their pain. They did everything in their power to be human at this moment, despite working for a lab that wanted them to be inhumane.
I was overwhelmed with gratitude when I saw the artwork for Bare Hands. I was especially drawn to the imagery of the rabbit, and I felt the artist captured exactly what I experienced in that moment. The soft colors in the background also stood out to me—they evoke a sense of peace and safety, which was exactly what I hoped to provide the rabbit in their final moments.
AUTHOR OF Bare Hands