Candace Frazee is ending her 2025 on what she would call a “hoppy” note. She and her husband Steve Lubanski, co-founders of Altadena’s popular The Bunny Museum spent a day this week as honored guests of La Cañada Flintridge Tournament of Roses Association, helping decorate a Rose Parade float that will one day belong in their storied collection.
Jen Lazo, decorating chair of the foothill city’s Rose Parade entry, explained the idea behind “Goin’ Nutz,” a group of animals hear their neighbors are hungry and decide to share their emergency acorn supply with them. A squirrel, skunk, snake, hummingbird, possum, duck and Lazo’s favorite, a slingshot-wielding bunny, move acorns across the float in silly ways, intent on simply helping others.
Seeing the rabbit figure on the design inspired Lazo to reach out to Frazee and Lubanski.
She said visits to The Bunny Museum were a cherished family tradition on holidays. Knowing the local landmark lost many of its previously donated float bunnies in the Eaton fire, Lazo coordinated donating their float’s bunny to the museum when it reopens.
“It fills me with joy to be able to give back to The Bunny Museum, which always held a treasured place in my heart,” Lazo said. “They’ve persevered through this challenge, and we are thrilled to be able to offer them a fully-decorated bunny to help rebuild their collection.”
Float officials also invited Frazee and Lubanski to drop by the float yard, glue bunny tail grass to the bunny’s body and even name the float figure.
“We chose Robbie-Rah because he looks like one of our previous bunnies with the same name, brown with a white tummy,” Frazee said. “And he appears to be the leader on the float, so we added ‘Rah’ to his name as we did with our Robbie-Rah.”
In the 1972 novel “Watership Down” by Richard Adams, a group of rabbits struggle to establish a new home. A prince or chief in the book has “rah” added to a leaders’ name, Frazee said.
The pre-parade sojourn on Dec. 27 was one of the more recent outings for Frazee, who is recovering from injuries to her knee and shoulder suffered while trying to evacuate the more than 60,000 rabbit-related items in her Guinness World Record-holding collection.
While they are accepting donations to restart their trove, the couple said the museum won’t reopen for another three or four years. The tally of their losses include five of the 10 Rose Parade float bunnies donated from previous celebrations, only their steel frames surviving the blaze.
The donation of Robbie-Rah is a start.
“Receiving Robbie-Rah with his brown fur made of Bunny Tail ornamental grass and the white cotton tummy will be our first Rose Parade float bunny with its original coverings on display in The Bunny Museum when it is rebuilt,” Frazee said. “It’s an exciting honor to be donated the La Cañada Flintridge Tournament of Roses Association float’s bunny. It is a hop(eful) sign of the museum hoppin’ back up again.”
La Cañada Flintridge itself was evacuated during January’s Eaton fire. The float site, where volunteers are helping decorate one of about six self-built floats in the lineup, is a little over a mile away from the nearest destroyed building, Lazo said.
Pam Wiedenbeck, the float association’s president, lost her home in the fire.
“We were grateful that the float site was intact, and that most of us were able to return home, and wanted to think of ways to give back to those neighbors in need, both through the depiction on our float, and a real world act of kindness,” Lazo said.
That includes one last helping hand for The Bunny Museum after all the hoopla of the 137th Rose Parade: Lazo said La Cañada’s float folks will be thrilled to give Robbie-Rah some more love after the parade, should restoration be required after a highly likely soggy sojourn down Colorado Boulevard.