Saturday 30 January 2010

Bun to be Wild

Pea, Pod, Cosmos and Goofy are wild (cross?) rabbits, hand-reared from a very young age. And they are great fun.

The wild streak can make the group quite manic at times, especially living in a group of four where there is always one doing something to set the others off into chaos.

Each of them sits on a different point on the scale of trust towards humans. When you go in to see them, outside of the usual feeding times, one will immediately bound up to you and place their paws on you to see what you are doing and one will move to the farthest corner and eye you suspiciously. The other two will lurk somewhere between, waiting to see what time it is - treat-time, cleaning-time or being-picked-up-for-health-checks-time! But all of them are ultimately friendly towards people and happy to be stroked once they have gotten to know you.

Today whilst cleaning them out, I repeatedly had to encourage them to move out of my way, to which they generally responded grumpily ("Hey, I was eating/relaxing-in that bit of hay!"), moved to somewhere I hadn't cleaned yet and glared at me. By the time this process had been repeated around the whole of their enclosure, we were left with four bunnies crammed into one small corner! ("Well, you've moved us from everywhere else!") It looked very cute and was one of the funniest moments I've experienced at the Rescue, though I don't think they really saw it that way. As with most of our cleaning-related stories, the incident ended with happy bunnies with their faces stuck into a pile of fresh Timothy Hay and dried grass, so I think they've forgiven me.

"Dude! Will you stop crowding me?
I'm trying to use the bathroom here!"

Caroline told me she fears these lovely little things will likely spend most or all of the rest of their lives stuck at the Rescue, which would be a great shame. It's probably true that they would be far too mischievous to be general house rabbits (you'd keep finding them under the sofa cushions and inside the VCR) and they are expert diggers/chewers, so you'd need a pretty well built enclosure to house them outside. But who wouldn't want to take in a cute little bunch of crazy bunnies that were almost guaranteed to make you laugh out loud every day?!

So now I need to save up to buy a house with a bigger garden. You have until then to get the adoption forms in before me... ;-)

Saturday 23 January 2010

Beware of the lunch thieves!

It wasn't my fault. Honest. I was sitting quietly having my lunch when this white flash suddenly appeared from nowhere and attacked me. Well, actually she attacked my sandwich - peanut butter, yum yum, she obviously thought so as well. Well I reckoned that this would be an easy battle to win, after all she's small and so very cute; I'd be able to fight her off easily.

How wrong I was. She's a strong little thing, that Perdy, but just when I thought I would win, I realised that she must have called for reinforcements, as two little helpers came at me from different sides. The tactic of Hoppy and Nestle was clearly diversionary as they went straight for the plastic bag containing my apples, found their way in and started nibbling. With my hands full from battling with Perdy, what could I do?
I realised I was on a loser so I had to sacrifice something. The peanut butter sandwich was too precious to lose so I grabbed an apple and thrust it under Perdy's nose. My tactic worked. Distracted for a moment, she let go of the sandwich, which was now all mine, ha ha! Thrusting the remains into my mouth I revelled in my victory.

However, my glory was short lived as my apple was disappearing fast. I tried to save it but it was too late as the three monsters had gorged their way through it. I'll swear they never took a breath during their merciless attack. I did manage to retrieve one of my biscuits for a moment but alas, weakened by the struggle I had to give in.

Finally gasping for breath and traumatised by my experience I staggered up and away from my tormenters, cursing their names ........................................................ or something like that.

Already I'm looking forward to my next lunch in warren 10!

Tuesday 19 January 2010

Bunface

This week we started setting up a Facebook page for the Rescue. If you are a Facebook user, search for The Rabbit Residence Rescue and "Become a fan" to receive updates of all the latest happenings and events, plus (of course) lots of pictures of our adorable bunnies, past and present.