Throwback Thursday: Stunt Bunny Tigger & Leo’s New Version

What bunny parents have to do to keep a Tigger safe ...So this throwback picture shows what we had to do to keep Tigger safe from her crazy daredevil stunt bunny desire.  She managed to do a bunny bump and get in to a closet. You can read the full story by clicking here to find out just how crazy dangerous to her well-being this bunny stunt was. When it came to getting in to things Tigger was pure stubborn determination.

Leo has his own version of this which is fortunately not as dangerous as Tigger’s stunt. Leo’s just gets him in to a forbidden bedroom. The bedroom doorway latch doesn’t do the job it is supposed to do. If you push on the door it will open. Well little Leo discovered that if he gave the door a bunny side bump, he could get in to that bedroom anytime he wanted to.

So I’m a bit slow sometimes with Leo to catch on to things I should bunnyproof. Leo has been a kinder gentler bunny in regards to being bad. So when he decides to go for it, I’m usually a few steps behind trying to catch up to what needs to be done. Leo managed a good number of bunny bumps to the door and unauthorized romps around the bedroom and hiding sessions under the bed before I realized that I needed to block the door. I would be busy doing something and would hear a funny bump noise and sure enough when I looked, the bedroom door would be open and Leo would be either nowhere in sight or just a fluffy white bunny behind quickly on the way to disappearing inside.

Leo on top of the bedroom doorway barricadeIt took some refining to get the barricade of the doorway it so it worked right. You can see Leo here sitting on top of his first version of the doorway barricade. We placed a cardboard box on the left where the door opens and his carrier blocking the right side of the doorway. Then Leo realized that he could pull the box out of the way, bump the door and he would be in again. After that, we put his carrier on the left side and the box on the right. Leo can’t pull his carrier out of the way to get to the opening side of the door.

Now if Leo wanted to let himself in, he would have to jump on top of his carrier and bump the door at the same time. Fortunately for us, he hasn’t figured that out.

Video Share: The Chewinator

This video is an appropriate follow-up to yesterday’s blog about sneaky little rabbit tricks of chewing on things on the sly. The rabbit in this video is boldly out there with his chewing. Some rabbits like Leo are more cautious and hidden in what they do. Some like Shadow have learned to hide the misbehavior to try to get away with more of it. Whatever kind of chewinator you have, learning bunnyproofing to protect the bunny from digestive harm and protect your home and belongings from too much damage is a must.

If the video isn’t working properly here, a link to it on YouTube: The Chewinator

We have a number of events going on this month and created a new page for all of them:
November 2013 Rabbittude Events

 

Sneaky Little Rabbit Tricks

Sneaky Leo plotsSo no way would this cute little bunny be plotting and planning something of evil destruction, right? Well we are finding that little Mr. Leo has another shade of Shadow (our previous devious destructo bunny) going on in spite of his cute innocent little bunny looks.

When we took him in to the vet at the end of October, everything was normal except she felt Leo’s stomach might be just a bit larger than it possibly should be. It was her first meeting with him though and nothing in any other way seemed wrong or out of the ordinary. So the vet told us to make sure he was eating a good diet to promote good motility of his digestive system and keep up with the weekly grooming of him to keep his excess fur ingestion down.

So on Monday Leo gives me a clue that there could be other sneaky little bunny activities that could have gone on that I will have to be more diligent to prevent. We had big problems with Shadow trying to consume anything he could sink his little teeth into. So Shadow had run time when someone was around to be supervising him so that he didn’t completely shut down his digestive system consuming all the household furnishings, carpets, upholstery, pillows, books, papers, sheets, blankets, wood furniture and baseboards. It got so we could tell what Shadow was chewing on by the sound of it. I didn’t think Leo was a carpet chewer like Shadow had been. There weren’t any bare spots or tell-tale little pieces of rug to be seen in his run area. Then on Monday I heard a funny chewing sound from him that I didn’t recognize.

When I checked out the sound, Leo had found a way to quietly munch on the rug. This area rug unlike others was not showing bare spots or he was being very careful to not graze too much in one area. It was clear he had eaten some rug as he had a few strands pulled loose and swallowed one before I could get it away from him. So Leo is going to lose some of his free roaming privileges like Shadow did, for the good of his digestive system. Leo didn’t like it when I put him in his pen when I needed to be away from him for a bit on Monday. He has a good-sized pen at 4 x 6 feet which normally doesn’t have the door closed, but he will have to get used to that more often if he is going to try to chew carpet.

I will have to check into replacing the area rugs with different ones that are jute or seagrass. We had some larger ones in jute and seagrass with Tigger and Shadow and wanted similar ones with Leo, but were having some difficulty finding them now without a latex backing. We couldn’t keep the ones we had previously as the vet wanted everything that could not sterilized thrown away since Tigger and Shadow had various infections going on at the end of their lives. So it is back to shopping around again for me to see if something is available that would be safer and allow Leo safer free roaming.

We’ll be making sure he gets lots of hay and monitoring his overall food intake and bunny poop output to make sure that what has gone in is coming back out. It just really puzzles me like it did with Shadow what the huge carpet attraction is all about. It can’t taste good and Leo has multiple choices in hay available in lots of places around his roaming space. I’ve also put down small straw mats in different areas. He has lots of wood and jute chew toys and some cardboard ones too. So what is the carpet fixation all about?

 

Shades of Shadow

Leo and baby gateWhat is it with boy bunnies and labels? I will never forget the ripping noise I heard one time in the office and turned to see Shadow pulling off the adhesive labels I had on a set of storage drawers.  I had to run to wrestle the labels away from him before he tried to consume the plastic with its adhesive backing.

So recently I hear Leo chewing at the baby gate and turn around to find him sitting up on his hind legs chewing at a spot on the side of the gate about a foot off the floor. I’m thinking, “Okay what is so interesting a foot off the floor as opposed to the part by the floor?”  I went to look and there was an adhesive warning label stuck to the side of the gate.  I hadn’t really noticed it because except for the text, the label was colored similarly to the gate. It didn’t really stand out to me. However, like Shadow before him, Leo had noticed the label and was trying to pull it off.  Fortunately for me, the label on the baby gate was not so easy to pull off as the label tape I had used on the files that Shadow had gone after.

Unfortunately it turned out there were other hidden to human eyes labels in the office.  I didn’t realize there were still labels stuck on the undersides of chairs, but Leo did. There were more ripping sessions and I had to take those away from him and spend some time on the floor staring up at the undersides of things to see what else he just might see that would be in reach of his little bunny teeth.

I am going to have to think if there is something safe I can give Leo or do for him that will be similar to finding things in unexpected places  for him to “steal”.

 

Treasured Tuesday – Tigger & Shadow

Plant tray as bunny furniture

This is Tigger & Shadow on their plant tray lounger. They are covering so much of it you can barely see it the dark green edges of it. When we brought them home as babies, we looked around first at things we had that we could use for them. Then if we didn’t have something we could repurpose, we would look for things to buy. We had some green plastic plant trays about 6 inches wide by 30-36 inches long that we weren’t using. The pictures below show how we thought those plant trays would be used, to hold their pellet and water bowls in their play areas. We naïvely thought that trays would be used as trays to catch spilled food or water.

Plant trays being used as feeding traysLittle did we know, but the bunnies showed us that the plant trays were actually the perfect size for bunny furniture. Over the years, they would lounge on them and especially when older, I think they liked the ease of getting on and off them, but also still having a bit of support with the low sides. Perhaps part of their liking might also have been that the trays were plastic and maybe a bit cooler than the carpet on some of the hotter Georgia days.

I included a link in the first paragraph to clearly see a picture of the type of tray we used. These are available lots of places, but I am using Amazon for some sample pictures of things we have used with the rabbits, since I can pin things on Amazon to our new Pinterest board: House Rabbits at Home. I plan to use that board to show some of the things that we have used or are planning to try now with Leo so that others can get ideas or give comments on items on the board if they have used similar things.

Tomorrow some of the things that are up in the studio here …

Tigger Requests a Window Seat – Part 2 – the Redesign

Hanging out in the new space ...

Hanging out in the new space ...

Tigger blending in with the cardboard and night sky ...

Tigger blending in with the cardboard and night sky ...

Tigger & Shadow enjoying the window bench

Tigger & Shadow enjoying the window bench seat

We thought we had the space all figured out when we got that nifty window ledge arrangement set up that I detailed on Wednesday. Then Tigger decided she wanted to show us some bungineer skills and change things up, big time. She started sinking her teeth into the wall around the window and pulling the drywall out through the plaster. When we heard and saw her do it, we couldn’t easily get to her with the way things were arranged. We had to disassemble the whole set up to get to Tigger and stop her.

We knew Tigger was not going to leave it alone and now had to figure out what to do. Chewing the plaster and drywall up was really bad for our apartment security deposit. It was also potentially extremely harmful to the rabbits. I had contact in later years with a woman who had a rabbit chew up some plaster and become poisoned from it. It required an emergency visit to the vet and fortunately the rabbit did pull through.  I didn’t know about the poison potential at the time we were rethinking this, but just did not want either rabbit chewing the walls.  It seemed like a really bad idea all the way around. 

There was a resin patio storage bench we had purchased for the room that was on the opposite wall. So we swapped the room around putting all the shelf and storage bin units where the bench had been. The bench was a beautiful fit for the window space and the openings in the back allowed the bunnies to easily crawl back and forth through from the bench to the window and back. We extended cardboard up the side of the wall to discourage Tigger from chewing the plaster.

The openness of the bench was not only loved by the bunnies, but it allowed us to get to them easily if we needed to relocate a misbehaving rabbit. It was a wonderful hang out spot. We had a carpet runner on it that was held in place with some elastic sheet straps with the alligator clip ends.  We had one set of straps in front holding the rug in place and another set that looped back through the outermost holes in the back.  We tied a couple bright purple cotton scarves over the sheet straps in the back to discourage the rabbits from chewing  through the elastic. 

Once Tigger and Shadow were fixed and bonded, they would often nap side by side on the window sill in the afternoon soaking up the sunshine. We had a second floor apartment. I often wondered if anyone walking by and looking up or in backyards near by realized it was rabbits in the window and not cats.

Next week Tigger toys …

Tigger Requests a Window Seat

Tigger plotting to get to the window ledge

Plotting ...

Tigger uses her new steps up to the window

Enjoying the new steps ...

Bunny coming through ...

Bunny coming through ...

Flopped in her new space.

Flopped in her new space.

We decided when we were looking towards the future bonding of Tigger and Shadow to rearrange our living space a bit and dedicate our smallest bedroom to them.  The bedroom was off a hallway enclosed on three sides right across from a bathroom.  So, it provided easy access to two very good neutral territory spaces.  We set them up in side by side cages in their new room and let them settle in, getting used to each other during the two months until they would be old enough to be fixed. We thought we had a really good plan to keep them and the room safe.

We were living in an apartment, so couldn’t make permanent changes.  We didn’t think we could make the window ledge in the room a safe enough place for them, so we started with the intent to block access to it.  We put a black plastic shelving unit in front with bins fully fitting the shelves holding some of their food and hay.  On either side of the shelf unit, we had a set of plastic rolling units with drawers, storing more bunny stuff.  On either side of those we had a covered corner litter box.

Well we should have known that Tigger would find a way to wiggle through everything we had in place and get up on to the window ledge.  You can see her in the first picture sitting on top of the corner litter box formulating the plan.  I didn’t think she could manage it and found myself out maneuvered once again.  We had to quickly move things to get her safely back down and work on plan B since it was clear she was going to insist on getting up there.

We took the storage bin off the second shelf that was almost level with the window ledge.  We put it on the floor in front of the shelving unit with a throw rug on top to make it a little less slippery.  Then we put another throw rug on the now empty second shelf.  The bin on the floor and empty shelf now made a stairway to the window.  We wedged some cardboard into the window space that was folded to fit and fill all the open areas. With the shelf and bins in front, the cardboard was held firmly in place.  We put another throw rug on that to provide a comfy hangout spot. 

You can see Tigger in the pictures checking things out, running through and flopped on the window sill.  We actually made the cardboard ramp through to the litter boxes on each end, so the rabbits could hop up, run across the window ledge and out on to the litter box on the other side and hop down again on the opposite side of the room. 

It became a bunny version of a jungle gym for a time.  They would hop up and down the steps, run through side to side from the litterboxes and just hang out on the window ledge during the day and evening.  It was fun to sit on the floor and watch them on their alternating run times zoom around and take different pathways up down and around to hang out surveying things going on outside the window.  This shelf is also where Tigger would commando crawl around underneath the lowest shelf of the shelving unit. So she just really had a blast with this set up.   

You knew it couldn’t possibly last, right?  Tigger was never a rabbit to leave things alone.  She was always trying to push the limits further and further.  She decided to become a bungineer and wanted to re-engineer the window entirely.  She just loved to test our ability to bunny proof.  With a pet security deposit on the line, and a deep concern for her safety and well being, we always kept pretty close tabs on what Tigger was up to when she was roaming around.   

Coming Friday, the window seat area changes again …

Death-Defying Daredevil Stunt Bunny Tigger

What bunny parents have to do to keep a Tigger safe ...So this picture shows what we had to do to keep Tigger safe from her crazy daredevil stunt bunny desire.  You see her up on top of a couple of cushion bolsters usually used to turn a regular mattress bed into a daybed. Behind that is an enormous approximately 4 foot by 6 foot piece of cardboard. Hidden behind the cardboard are the sliding track doors to a closet.

The closet is where the story begins.  It had sliding doors that were in a track at the top and hung free at the bottom.  The closet was about six feet wide and the doors went up to almost ceiling height.  Each door was the size and weight of a regular room entry door, so they were quite large and heavy.  We didn’t see any problem with those doors in relation to the rabbits.  Then Tigger showed us the error in our thinking.

Even though large and heavy, since the doors hung free at the bottom, there was some movement to them and somehow Tigger discovered that.  We were horrified one day as we watched her run around the room to see her run up to the closet doors and stop right where the doors met and overlapped by a couple of inches.  She positioned her body beside the door on the inner track.  Tigger gave the door a sideways body blow which swung the door in a few inches, creating a brief space between the two doors. Tigger immediately zoomed into that space and into the closet. The door fell heavily back into place just a second later. 

Trying to prevent this stunt took some thinking, because we could not allow her to try it again.  We pictured her misjudging the timing by just a split second and then being crushed or smashed between the those doors.  The sheer size and weight of them compared to Tigger was staggering.  So we got the huge piece of cardboard and blocked the doors and then took some book ends to hold the cardboard upright at the base and then placed the cushion bolsters in front to keep everything in place and give Tigger a new hang out to remove the memories of the closet temptation.

On Wednesday, Tigger requests a window seat …

Air Bunny Flights

Good morning ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Air Bunny.  There are no flight plans, take offs are unscheduled and landings are often sudden and sloppy.  Enjoy the flight!

Tigger leaving the hanger and gathering speed.

Tigger leaving the hanger and gathering speed...

And we have lift off ...

And we have lift off.

That is what I thought I should be regularly announcing as a warning to unsuspecting folks. Unfortunately, the most unsuspecting folks were Blaine and I, because Tigger liked to launch with little thought and less warning. We lost count over the years of crash landings and the number of times we would find her hanging by her paws from something because she didn’t quite make it.  It amazed us how little fear she had for her own safety and how indestructible she seemed to be.  There really was no stopping her.  We just tried as much as we could to make sure that as many landings as possible were soft.  Breakables and sharp objects were removed from all surfaces along with things that fell over or were knocked over easily.  Plants and anything dangerous if chewed got removed too.

The one time she would give warning is when she was being particularly ambitious. As a baby bunny at just two and half pounds, she wanted up on the guest bed with a feverish intensity. We would see her at the complete opposite side of the room (15 feet away) looking at the bed with a glint in her eye and a tense posture. Think of what a race horse looks like right before they leap into full speed racing. We would see that look and know that an airborne assault on the bed was about to commence. She would race top speed a little past half the length of the room and then would launch herself flying through the air, usually landing on the bed where she would take off running around on the newly conquered high ground.

The most memorable time I missed seeing but laughed myself to tears when Blaine told me about it.  He was laying on the guest bed relaxing and watching Tigger playing when he saw her stop and stand completely still at the opposite side of the room looking at the bed.  He knew what was coming.  He had just enough time to holler, “NO!” and seconds later baby Tigger was landing on his face.  She was so fast, he hadn’t even had time to close his mouth, so there he was with a mouthful of furry bunny tummy until they could sort themselves out.  Picturing the reactions of both of them with that landing had me in stitches.

Another time, I was sleeping in one weekend morning when Blaine was suddenly shaking my shoulders and yelling, “She’s lose, she got out, she’s running all around and I can’t catch her!”  We had been putting a 27″ baby gate in the doorway of her room so that we could step in and out over it while Tigger stayed contained in her bunny proofed space.  That morning Blaine had gotten up early and let her out to play when she suddenly leaped straight up at the top of the baby gate, balanced on it for a second and leaped down into the next room and took off top speed racing around.  We had a little bunny race around round-up and after that we got her back in her space, we continued to use the baby gate in the doorway, but we kept the door closed until we needed to come and go.  Then we always looked to see where she was to prevent her deciding to accompany us over the gate.  We tried to make our exits when she was too far away to successfully make an attempt or when she was really occupied with something that had her full attention.

Tigger was teaching us from an early age that dealing with a rabbit required the ability to strategize.  She was always thinking, plotting and planning which kept us thinking, plotting and planning how to keep ahead of her to keep her safe.

Coming Monday, death-defying daredevil stunt bunny Tigger…

The Commando Bunny Rabbit

Tigger commando crawling under stepstool

There she goes

Tigger crawling under the shelving unit

And there she goes again ...

Tigger crawling out from under the shelving unit

And here she comes ...

Tigger is about to become upwardly mobile with her commando crawling

Contemplating next stunt ...

Tigger the commando bunny rabbit came as a surprise.  My previous rabbit experience led me to expect hopping, running like the wind, leaping onto things. I didn’t remember my family’s house rabbit, Thumper, crawling under things. I also didn’t really expect it because it seemed out of character for Tigger. She was so dainty ladylike in how she positioned and moved that she was very Princessy and prissy at times. So getting down on her belly and crawling into tight spaces didn’t seem like her thing.

First she belly crawled under the kiddie stepstools we had in her space.  Then she commando crawled under a plastic shelving unit.  I didn’t think she could since the lowest shelf was just a couple of inches off the floor, but you can see from the pictures she was easily able to crawl in and out.  We put a whole bunch of empty paper towel rolls under the shelf to discourage the crawling.  We didn’t want her hanging out under there chewing the carpet.  First she would pull the rolls out and then go crawling under anyway.  You could tell by the way Tigger would throw the rolls that our slowing her down really annoyed  her.

The cute picture of her resting on the newspapers was one of those before the near disaster shots.  The rolling file rack was under a desk. The arrow in the picture points to the privacy screen at the back.  I left the room for just a couple of minutes.  When I returned, I looked over at the desk and gasped to see just the tips of two bunny ears peaking above the desktop while one bunny foot was hanging down below the privacy screen.  Tigger had commando crawled up the wall in the two inches of space between the desk and wall. 

I didn’t have a clue what to do to safely help Tigger and she was high enough up that the idea of a fall scared me.  I was bouncing up and down looking at the situation from the top and then from the bottom and desperately trying to think. Gravity quickly decided the matter and Tigger slipped back down to the floor.  I was terrified she was going to be hurt, but she took off top speed racing around.  I folded up into a bit of a heap on the floor feeling that after the adrenaline rush shakiness.  Blaine arrived home at that moment and thought something had happened to me since Tigger was running and playing quite happily without a care.  After I explained what had happened, we blocked the back of the desk to prevent further upwardly mobile excursions.  

After Shadow came along, we had side by side cages.  When cooler weather approached, we read it was a good idea to have cages a few inches off the floor to protect from floor level drafts.  We had boxes just a couple of inches high that were just a bit smaller than the cage widths that we used to raise them.  There was a space between the two boxes running the length of the cages at the middle that was just two by three inches. We felt it was too small for the bunnies to get into.  Well it was for Shadow, but Tigger proved she could fit and went wiggling in.  As soon as she came safely out the other side, we put the cages back down to floor level and just draped a sheet over them at night for warmth. 

A few days later I realized she hadn’t come through that commando crawl safely.  I saw Tigger going nuts scratching her side with her back leg.  When I parted her fur, I saw a scab and a big black spot.  So, off to the vet we went. Tigger got her fur clipped back along her side, because the vet couldn’t tell what she was looking at either.  Turns out Tigger had scraped two inches of skin off her side.  One end was healing and the black spot was actually fur growing back in that was just barely poking out of the skin, creating the dark coloring.  The other end of the scrape was scabbed and obviously itching causing the scratching that had alerted me to the injury.  We were given an antibiotic ointment to help prevent infection and aid quicker healing.

You know that niggling little feeling you get sometimes?  Well I had that one time when I was walking up the stairs and turned around to see Tigger disappearing underneath the sofa.  Our sofa has dual recliners built into each end which we never opened up with the rabbits out.  The front and sides went all the way to the floor.  About two inches from the back, the sides curved up leaving a small space where the back and side met that was just two by three inches.  We knew the very young Tigger could fit in that space, but we wrongly thought she had grown too big to make it anymore.  If I hadn’t turned around, I have no idea how long it might have taken to figure out where she had gone. 

The sofa back had a two inch opening at the base that was divided in two by a metal support bar running the full width of the back.  We had boxes blocking the full back so the rabbits could not even see the opening.    We removed those boxes so we could see Tigger in the crawl space under the sofa and she could see us, but the metal bar didn’t allow her to exit that way.  We could tell she had forgotten how she had wiggled in and were trying to coax her back to the opening, but Tigger was getting nervous and starting to bulldoze the insides of the sofa.  It made us really nervous to do it, because we weren’t sure how the mechanism was going to move, but we ended up having to open one of the recliners allowing an opening for her to run out.  After that, we plugged that space on either side of the sofa with pieces of wood.

Tigger taught us to never underestimate the ability of an active, determined rabbit to wiggle and squirm into seemingly impossible spaces. 

Coming on Friday, Air Bunny …

The Tigger Principle

Tigger contemplating the leap

Yes she did hop up on the green planter box, right after this picture was taken.

Tigger’s life goal seemed to be to go where no bunny had ever thought of going or been before and to do it in whatever was the worst possible way.  She kept us on our toes trying to keep ahead of her with bunny proofing.  It was clear very early that Tigger did not seem to understand the concept of limits and personal safety.  Throughout her life and then Shadow’s, who learned by copying what he saw her do, we found ourselves repeating this question a lot, “Have you lost your little bunny mind?” 

In her early kitchen days while we were bunny proofing her room and getting her litter box trained, her posture in this first picture was a sign.  When Tigger looked at something, she was thinking and what she was thinking was, “I’m going to go there.”  If she stood up on her hind legs and looked at something, that is exactly where she would be leaping next.  I took this picture, then had to run for her right after it was taken.  Tigger jumped up and landed on the top of the green planter box we had wedged to block access to the back of the refrigerator.  I had just seconds to prevent her from hopping down and getting behind the refrigerator and the unprotected cord and outlet back there.

It was fortunate we learned this behavior in the kitchen because it allowed us to see and identify a lot of shortcomings in our  bunny proofing when we moved her run and play time into the guest bedroom / office where her cage was kept.  We knew if Tigger looked at something that she was planning on going there and we had better make sure that it was safe or truly off-limits inaccessible.  When we saw her sitting up on her hind legs looking at the top of her cage, we knew that was next on her bunny to do list.  We had to act fast, because the bars on her cage top were far enough apart that there was a good chance she would not have a safe landing and would harm herself.  We got a piece of cardboard right away and cut it to the size of the cage top and held it in place by using Acco binder clips to clip the cardboard to the cage wires.  With that in place, she hopped up and landed without the fear of a leg or paw dropping through the bars, but the cardboard was a bit slick and she almost went skidding off the other side.  So we got a small throw rug the size of the cage top and used jumbo 4 inch paper clips to clip the rug to the cardboard.  As you can see, she enjoyed her new hang out.  Throughout her life, Tigger loved the high ground of resting on her cage top, able to completely and easily survey her rabbit domain to rest while plotting next moves.

Tigger on her bunny proofed cage top

Resting for now on her bunny proofed cage top

Tigger was extremely fast and we didn’t always catch her scouting looks, so she still got into to some places that we never expected.  She used the cage top as a stepping stool and hopped from there up on to the desk and started looking at the hutch on the desk.  We had to move things around so that the cage was too far from the desk for her to make the leap.  Otherwise, we thought it was entirely possible that she would hop up each shelf and get to the top of the hutch.  It we had allowed that, it wouldn’t have surprised us at all if we had come into the room to see Tigger hanging from the ceiling fan.  She seemed to set no limits for herself as you will learn in the rest of our posts this week.

Coming on Wednesday, Commando Bunny and on Friday, Air Bunny …

Our Carrot Patch

Shadow on Dining Room RugSo how did we come to have a carrot colored rug in our dining room? When we first bought our home, the previous owners left behind their room sized rug.  It was solid black with a border in black and cream.

We had two problems with that rug.  The first became obvious the night I walked into the dining room when the dimmer switch for the light was set on low.   Part of the rug ahead of me moved, freaking me out.  Black rabbit + black rug = bad idea.  Shadow was going to get stepped on if we didn’t do something.  The second problem was that the bunnies liked it way too much and carpet isn’t good for rabbit digestive systems.

When we were investigating a replacement, our vet suggested getting a jute rug.  She said that the natural fiber would be better for  rabbit systems if they decided they just had to have some.  So I hit the internet looking for room sized and reasonable.  I wanted to find a jute rug that was reversible, meaning no latex backing.  We didn’t need to worry about the rug slipping, since there would be an oak dining room table and six chairs keeping it where it belonged.  We wanted to be sure it was jute through and through so that it could be flipped for double the wear.

I found an online store that had the rugs for a reasonable price, but the colors were mostly icky muddy, unappealing shades and one bright color, carrot orange.  I think the catalog actually called it burnt orange, but then a catalog called our office paint color desert sunset.  That really is pumpkin and we need to repaint sometime.  Paint doesn’t always darken as it dries. 

So what else would I buy for a rabbit friendly rug?  Of course it had to be the carrot orange.  This is actually the second carrot orange jute rug to fill the dining room space.  Our dearly departed Portia bunny chewed huge holes in the first one while she occupied the first floor all by herself.

Tigger and Shadow are enjoying hanging out on their carrot patch.  They love the sunshine that floods in the bay window during the afternoons.