Shadow loved to play with everything, including his food.  He would burrow his head into the big box of hay we had and come up with his head and shoulders covered with the hay.  Then he would take off running scattering it everywhere he went.  We ended up buying a carpet rake which is usually used to keep the pile from matting.  In our case, it was used to rake up the large hay pieces since trying to vacuum them would clog the vacuum cleaner.

We thought of him as our comic jester bunny.  He was always up for getting in to things and places that were off-limits.  If we opened the door of a room or closet, we could count on Shadow showing up pretty quickly trying to insert himself into forbidden spaces.  Sometimes we would forget and leave a door open and in he would go.  One time I heard a funny tippety tap sound coming from the treadmill in an off limits bedroom.  I had forgotten to put up the baby gate and Shadow was up on the treadmill facing the right direction and hopping forward on it as if to say, “I know Mom uses this to exercise, now how do I get it to go, so that I can too?”

When Tigger and Shadow were older, slowing down and getting a bit chubby, we put them on a vet recommended diet.  Every time I headed for the kitchen to get myself a meal or snack they were hot on my heals begging for greens when I opened the refrigerator (See the Bunny Dickens cartoon).  One time I shook my finger at them both and said, “No greens for you two right now, go eat your hay, you are both too fat.”  I turned my back to finish preparing my snack and heard a funny sound behind me.  When I turned around again to look, Shadow had hopped on our digital scale and was looking down at the screen as if he was trying to figure out his weight.  It was the only time I had seen him hop on the scale and just too funny that he did it right after I told him he was getting too heavy.

Next week, how we almost lost Shadow at just two years old …