We call Tigger our tiny terror. Right from the start, we knew we were in trouble. Tigger was a two pound baby when we brought her home. We found out quickly, she was two pounds of sheer determination. She would sit up on her hind legs and look around at things and the next thing we knew she was hopping up where she had been looking. She would hop on top of her cage and hop from there on to a desk and from there on to the shelves of the hutch on the desk. One time she actually scaled the wall behind the desk by shimmying up between the wall and the privacy screen that formed the back of the desk. I came in to the room and saw just the tips of her ears peaking above the desk and the bottom of one paw hanging below the back of the desk.

When she wasn't using items to springboard from one to another, she was taking running starts and flying leaps. If you were in the room with her you would see her in position like a runner with an intense look on her face and then she would go flying off. We had Tigger quartered in the guest bedroom / office. One time my husband was lying on the guest bed and turned to see her with that look. He had just enough time to say "NO!" and the next instant he was sucking bunny tummy as she landed on his face. Another time she took a flying leap over the baby gate in the doorway of her room and took off racing around the house.

It wasn't at all unusual to find Tigger hanging by her paws from something if she misjudged. We often said that we would not have been surprised to come in to a room and actually see her hanging by her paws from the ceiling fan. She just seemed to know no boundaries. I really didn't think we were going to make it to one year with her. Tigger seemed so suicidal in her stunts. She really tested all the limits and our ability to stay one step ahead of her with bunnyproofing. And then came Shadow. Until we had them both fixed, they were in separate cages in the same room and could see each other in their separate run times. Shadow was also a baby when we brought him home and he learned things even quicker than Tigger had. He didn't have to figure out if he could do something, all he had to do was watch Tigger and he knew he could. He was onto things and into things even faster than Tigger by simply following her lead. He actually leaped a baby gate that was at the top of a flight of stairs and amazingly, somehow didn't fall down them.

Tigger would also take the low ground and commando crawl and shimmy herself into any space she could squeeze into. Even full grown, we have found she is capable of getting into any space that is 3" by 2". She is also known as hipless wonder or weasel. She has a body shape like a long skinny weasel. We have had to dig her out from under bookshelves, the TV stand, the sofa, everything! Once we made the mistake of trying to put Tigger and Shadow's cages on a low platform when we read it was good to have the rabbits at least a little above floor level to protect them from drafts. The platform had a gap down the center of just 2" x 3" and sure enough, in Tigger went. The platform went bye, bye quickly. We had sliding closet doors that were on tracks at the top but hung free at the bottom. Somehow, Tigger figured out that if she bounced against the inner door it would swing in and she could run into the brief space created between the doors and get into the closet. We were terrified when we saw her do it, so afraid we were going to see her smashed between the doors if her timing was off. We blocked access to the closet door fronts immediately.

Now it is seven years later, and we are so glad to have our tiny terror and her sidekick still with us. In all the years and all the stunts, we have been fortunate to have only had one scraped side and one strained leg between them. Take it from us though, if you ever bring home a bunny bent on rabbit extreme stunts, you will need to do all the research on bunnyproofing as fast as you can. The only way we really kept them safe was to to be one step ahead of what they might try next and block access or make it safe. We knew from Tigger's sit up looks that she planned on hopping on her cage top. Fortunately when she did, we already had a piece of carpeted cardboard in place or she could have easily broken a leg, since the cage top bars were too far apart for a baby rabbit to land safely.

~ Rebecca Pullin