Be My Hunny Bunny

Candace Frazee and her husband Steve Lubanski opened up their private house as a public museum 14 years ago. Since then they have had more than 18,000 visitors—in fact, I was visitor 18,385—all of whom come to check out their 28,000-plus bunny-themed objects that make their home in Pasadena the only Bunny Museum in the world.

They hold two Guinness Book of World Records for the most bunny-themed objects (each won in a Year of the Rabbit) and have appeared in numerous articles about odd collection articles. Theirs is a living museum, meaning they are literally using the room filled with plush bunnies to watch TV in, and the one with with live bunnies hopping around, that’s a kitchen to cook and eat in. It’s totally free and open 365 days of the year by appointment only, and on holidays they open up their doors so that anyone can “hop by.”

Candace is a good-natured lady who always wears red lipstick and communicates with the vocal inflection of a professional actress mixed with a squealing tween. Whenever she is excited by something—which can be simply a visitor walking through the front door, or pointing out the two framed certificates on the wall—she shrieks.

You might think the bunny museum was all about bunnies, and to a certain extent you’d be right. There are sections dedicated to snow domes of bunnies, southwestern bunnies, babies pretending to be bunnies, and even a bunny Elvis. But if you come expecting to learn about the bunny’s historical role in folklore or anatomy of a rabbit, you’re out of luck. Because really the museum isn’t about bunnies; it’s more about Steve and Candace’s love.

The couple started dating in 1992 and immediately grew sweet on each other. “I started calling Steve my ‘hunny bunny’,” says Candace. “And he liked that. So he looked for a bunny to get me and he couldn’t find one anywhere. Teddy bears were everywhere! But no bunnies! He finally found a bunny in a florist shop. And in the florist shop he had them put it in a balloon so to get the bunny, I had to pop the balloon. So dramatic!” That bunny now sits in the first bookcase you see when you walk in.

They started giving each other bunnies on holidays and birthdays, and then because they were getting too excited to wait, the tradition escalated to each giving the other a bunny every single day as a token of their love. “I could have called him my cute little elephant or my cute little gorilla and it would be a elephant or gorilla museum,” explains Candace. “I didn’t pick the animal! It wasn’t a conscious thing. It was just a natural progression of love!”

There’s something else a bit obsessive going on here, and that is that Candace has worn red every single day for more than 20 years. It’s understandable, because indeed she looks stunning in red. “I am everything that red is,” she says. “Vibrant. Vivacious. Bold. All the symbols of red I am!”

She even wore red to her wedding, which was—yep—bunny-themed. This was before they’d opened the museum. Candace made a carrot cake that had two bunnies on top, the centerpieces were plush bunnies, and Steve even surprised her by showing up in a full-on bunny outfit to the reception.

Another thing? Candace is an expert on philosopher, inventor, and Christian mystic Emanuel Swedenborg; she maintains an international newsletter about the guy and has also written two books about him.“Swedenborg says that after we die, we go down a tunnel and into a world pretty much like here, but you live with people that are your ‘like kind.’ People who think like you, that’s who you associate with in the next world,” she says. “You know how you go to a party and you just don’t feel comfortable and you leave? That’s how it is.”

In the Bunny Museum, Candace has created a space where death is a non-issue. After hearing about a process that freeze-dries dead pets, the couple shipped out their deceased bunnies to a “gun-toting state where the chemicals are legal” and have the preserved pets in a glass shelf in their dining room. Even broken bunny artifacts don’t get tossed into the garbage--instead outside they have a “Garden of Broken Dreams” where all broken bunnies get placed next to rose bushes.

Candace offers us a glass of wine, pulling out bunny-themed gilded champagne glasses and announces, “I’m going to serve you Rabbit Ridge.” Not able to contain myself, I burst out laughing and soon we are both laughing hysterically. “Don’t worry, “ she says. “It’s not made of real rabbit.”

This is the moment that I learned that anyone can be Candace’s Bunny Bud, unless you are too hungover to think before offering up the information that you ate bunny sausage that very morning, like I did.

“No, don’t say that! Say it tasteslike chicken and it’s normal and nobody should eat bunnies. Why would you do that?” she shrieks, throwing accusatory looks over to Logan, my friend and photographer who came with. “Did you do that sinful thing too?” To which Logan says that she would never eat a bunny rabbit, leaving me to try to explain myself. “It was local, from the Hollywood Farmer’s Market and it was totally organic,” I mumble apologetically. “Oh so the bunny got to hop around a little!” Candace replies, and she and Logan laugh at me. Now, according to Candace, I’m only half of a Bunny Bud. Maybe this means in my next life I’ll be starring in the remake of Fatal Attraction.

WORDS: MAUDE STANDISH

PHOTOS: LOGAN WHITE