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What started out as a single blog post quickly grew into a social media viral campaign that warmed the hearts of South Africans across the country and had everyone looking for a rabbit.
A post on the blog 6000.co.za had a heartbreaking plea asking for a replica of a little boy's toy bunny to be found. Little Nic Henshilwood is going for his Radiated Iodine therapy very soon and will be in isolation for up to 3 days.
After this part of his treatment his pajamas, bedding and his beloved rabbit will have to be incinerated. His family was desperately trying to find the same rabbit to act as a body double.
The original rabbit was bought at Woolworths about 10 years ago. Woolworths quickly retweeted the post and so did many other bloggers and Twitter users. A hashtag called #Rabbit4Nic was created by Twitter user @CapeTown and quickly started trending nationwide.
You Magazine was alerted to Nic's plea by Twitter user @anib. We decided to share the photo and message on both our Facebook and Twitter pages and so did sister magazine Huisgenoot.
Within an hour we had a body double for Nic's Rabbit thanks to the very sweet and brave Chanè Stapelberg (9) from Pretoria. "You are a star! I am Nic's dad and am so amazingly thankful! We are so totally overwhelmed by the outpouring of love and support from so many people ! Thank you everybody that has been involved in this project, has restored all of our faith in humanity," Stuart Henshilwood wrote on YOU's Facebook page. The stand-in-rabbit will be couriered from Pretoria first thing tomorrow morning. LATEST UPDATE (19 October)
We have now found three rabbits for Nic. See photos here.
Nic might need more treatment in future so we ask that all our readers keep looking for more bunnies. The more we find the better.
(Photo: Chanè Stapelberg with the stand-in rabbit)
