Little Tigger will take off at top speed and Shadow immediately assumes that there must be danger and shoots off at the same time. She will often sound the alarm when he is in the bunny latrine. So his take off will come with a spray of litter into the air. Sometimes they are a tandem pair of rabbits running full speed looking for all the world as if they are harnessed together. At other times they take off in opposite directions. If we are lucky one or both of them will fly up the stairs, dive under the bed, and start thumping out danger signals. If we are unlucky they will run in opposite directions and come diving into a tunnel from different directions, meeting in the middle in a head on bunny collision.
Tigger is quite a vigilant bunny sentry in responding to knocks on the door, phones ringing, and anyone walking into the room. When it comes to movement or noises, Tigger has a hare trigger. She is very catlike in patrolling the perimeter and can often be seen flopped on top of the cage using the high ground to maintain surveillance. Tigger and Shadow are housed on the second level of a tri-level home and Tigger will also station herself at the stair landing on the second floor to be able to monitor anyone coming up or down the staircases.
Our bunny drills are initiated by the warden of the warren, Miss Tigger, our Tiny Terror, aka Freakazoid. She is always on full alert for anything she deems out of the ordinary. Basically, almost anything moving or making noise in the room that isn’t her.
In stark contrast to the very relaxed cute kitty flops that I wrote about earlier, this hyper alertness make us feel at times that we have a psycho bun with a split personality. She can go from completely relaxed to running full speed in the blink of an eye.
I have lost count of the number of drills that we humans have set off by sneezing. No germ in the world is going to get close enough to Tigger to get her! However after such thoughtless offenses on our part, our bunny sentry will often give us that look for startling her and setting off a false alarm.
The bunny drills were more upsetting when they were younger. Now, I guess I’ve gotten used to a bunny on patrol and Tigger has settled down some in what she recognizes as a danger. We finally realized that if we talk to her as we move around or come into rooms, she stays alert but doesn’t go too crazy. At least they still get some exercise as they get older.