Tag Archives: funny

The Cost of Rabbits

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Pirate Bunny

Pirabbit ~ Hand over your money ...

Early on with Tigger and Shadow, I was doing lots of online searches for help on bunnyproofing.  Some of what I found was lighthearted and funny, but really good information at the same time.   

The following piece is one I had printed out years ago from a page on www.showbunny.com.  I am no longer finding the page on their website.  So I will type it in here for your enjoyment.  It is funny but also too true. 

 

Lose Money: Raise Rabbits

It begins with the free rabbit that your friend offers you.  He thought his was a male, and was surprised to find that he now owns seven rabbits instead of one.

So you get the Rabbit Starter Kit (~$60).

Then you buy all the rabbit books that the pet store has, along with $100 worth of Rabbit Treat and chew toys.

Then you find out that the books were written in 1950 and are mostly wrong.  The Rabbit Treat is too rich for them.  The starter kit is full of things like alfalfa and cedar shavings that are bad for rabbits.  The bunny ignores the chew toys – what they really want is paper and cardboard.

You also discover that the cage you bought is inappropriate for rabbits and just about any other small animal.  Moved by guilt, you purchase a better cage with a nice pan underneath ($85+).

You hear that rabbits can be litter-trained, so you buy a litter pan and kitty litter. (~$10). The clay litter turns out to be not so good, so you replace it with a flushable litter (~5).

The paper and cardboard cause intestinal blockage which requires treatment ($500).

And their nails grow too long and you try to cut them, but the bunny amputates one of your fingers, so you pay a vet to do it (~$15 for nail clipping; $75 for YOUR doctor visit).

You discover that you have one of those rabbits which need their teeth trimmed, too! (~$15).

Then he pees all over and humps your foot, so you pay to have him neutered (~$100).

Then he discovers your computer and chews through the power cable and printer cord (~$100).

He ruins your antique furniture and chews up the baseboards (~$a whole lot).

He starts digging in the wall to wall carpeting, creating a huge hole.  He eats the stuff underneath, requiring another trip to the vet.  The landlord finds out and you are forced to leave, forgoing your security deposit ($300 and up!). That’s not mentioning the new security deposit and moving costs …

The phone goes dead and you see the last of the cord disappearing into bunny’s mouth.  He eats the phone book for desert.

You get smart and you rabbit-proof the house ($~100-$200).

And then he jumps up on your lap and rubs your nose with his.  “Awww,” you say, “It’s all worth it.”

Addendum … Rabbit dies after 8-10 years of senseless destruction and you go out to get another because you miss having a bunny around. 🙂

~Author Unknown

I only wish that some of the current prices were still as low as when this was first written!

Now On Duty …

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Tiggers' Stuff

This is MY stuff!

We have rabbit supervisors.  There are times when they are out roaming around that you won’t see a bunny at all, until you touch their stuff.  Then bunnies appear in the blink of an eye and are all over you wanting to know what you are doing.

The picture is classic to our supervisors.  We started to clean up their room that we had in our old apartment.  We were using a clean litter pan as a collection of things that needed to be thrown out or put away elsewhere.  Tigger was nowhere to be seen and then we turned around to find she had hopped into the collection pan to guard HER STUFF!  She is literally laying on some things hiding them.

We pull litter boxes out of cages to change them and have to continuously herd rabbits out of the dirty boxes so that we can actually get them out of the room.  The body language speaks volumes.  You know they are saying, “Hey wait just a minute there that is MINE!”

When a cage gets a clean out or things are switched out, a bunny rabbit is hopping in and out and supervising each exchange.  I’ve read about some rabbits being so cage protective that they bite when things are moved or changed.  I am thankful that our rabbit supervisors have never disagreed with us strongly enough to voice displeasure with teeth involved.

Follow Friday – A Test for You & for Bunny

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Bunny Whispers

Hey did you hear there's a test tonight?

These tests have been on the web for quite awhile, fun if you haven’t seen them before:

How much of a bunny slave are you?  Find out here:
The 100 Question Slave Purity Test

Do you have a toughbun?  Questions are adapted from various stories told about toughbuns:
The 100 Question Toughbun Purity Test

Deaf, Dumb and Stupid – Not!

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Shadow on dining room chair

Planning my next move ...

Shadow is a particularly stubborn bunny. For months after we first brought him home, we thought he was a bit stupid, because he wasn’t appearing to understand or respond to “No! Bad Bunny!”  We had Tigger for two months prior to bringing Shadow home and Tigger understood and did not like to be called “Bad Bunny“ or be spoken to sharply. She would stop what she was doing and hop off.  Then later she would try to slink back to the bad behavior once she thought our attention was on something else.

Then I discovered Shadow clearly did understand “Bad Bunny”.  One day after I had chased him away from chewing furniture, we settled down for some head pets which he loves.  I had caught him mishbehaving with his chewing and now I was kind of chewing him out verbally. I was saying things like, “Why do you have to be such a bad bunny. You know how to be a good bunny. You don’t have to be a bad bunny.” Shadow suddenly stood up, turned around and looked at me with his head tipped to the side. It was clear he was questioning me.

That is when I realized he did know the difference between “Bad Bunny” and “Good Bunny”. I had confused him by petting him and calling him a “Bad Bunny”. After that Blaine and I both watched him more closely when he misbehaved.  We realized that when we would start calling him “Bad Bunny”, he was trying to misbehave faster. He knew how much time it would take us to physically get to him and he was speeding up the bad activity trying to get it done before we could stop him. Stubborn bad bunny!

When the rabbits are out of our line of sight and we hear “bad chewing”, we immediately start to loudly say or yell (depends on our distance to them), “No! Bad Bunny”.  That will stop Tigger, but with Shadow, we have to physically get to him.  Usually we distract him with something he can chew.  If it is the second time on the same bad activity, we try to relocate him to another part of the house to get him focused on something else.

We make sure to spend quality time with the rabbits interacting with them.  Bored bunnies easily become bad bunnies. 

Sunning Our Buns

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Shadow loves the sunshineWe never gave much thought to the possibility of the bunnies liking the sunshine. You usually don’t see rabbits out in the heat of the day. Our bunnies often like hidey hole areas for their afternoon naps.

Tigger and Shadow did show an early interest in bunny sun bathing. When they were young, we were living in an apartment and dedicated our smallest bedroom to be theirs. We rigged it out for them with an outdoor storage bench in front of the window backed up to the sill. There were cutouts in the back of the bench and Tigger and Shadow would wiggle through and sometimes take afternoon naps on the sill. We often wondered if anyone looking up to see animals sleeping in the second story window would ever realize that they were rabbits and not cats.

When we moved into our home, the bunnies lost their ledge. There isn’t a single window with a wide enough sill in the whole house for a bunny. The dining room window comes down to just a foot off the floor. We put an exercise step there and waited to see if they would accept that as a suitable substitute for their beloved sill.

Tigger will sometimes hop up, but it is Shadow who loves it for sleeping in the sunshine. He also picks spots on the rug with the sun shining in on him full blast.  I would not have imagined that a completely black rabbit would like the sun so much.  I would have thought that he would get too hot. Clearly he loves being a sun bun. 

I have to be careful sneaking up on him to get pictures. If I disturb his sun worship and wake him up, I get that bunny look of disdain.

Bunana Addicts

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Bunana Addicts

Design available on T shirts and other fun items in our CafePress store and as ACEO mini art in our Etsy shop

We created two bunny banana addicts. We didn’t mean to do it. We didn’t think we had done it, but we did it.

Everything we read said rabbits liked bananas too much and they are too fattening for them. So we planned to make these a rare treat and not get them addicted.

When Tigger and Shadow were babies, just months old, we had them spayed / neutered.  Afterwards as a precaution, the vet wanted them on antibiotics. We didn’t want to try to hold them down for medication when they were recovering from surgery. So we had what we thought was a great idea to give them medicated “banana sandwiches”. We took small Asian dipping bowls and put a really thin banana slice in the bottom, squirted the medication on the slice and covered it with another really thin banana slice. Both bunnies were nice enough to eat everything and even lick the bowls. They took their medication, but in one short week, we created addicts for life.

Fast forward to a few years later … Banana treats have been rare, maybe once or twice a year. We think they don’t remember those early days and that smooth banana taste and texture or the heady banana smell. Usually, we would eat bananas where Tigger and Shadow didn’t have access. However, one day I walk into the living room with a cereal bowl in my hand and the last bite of banana in my mouth. As soon as I sit down, I have a black rabbit bouncing on my lap inspecting my bowl. Shadow rapidly looses interest in the cereal and starts stretching up my chest, patting me on the chin with his paws, and sniffing my mouth. He is so close, his whiskers are tickling up my nose. It occurs to me that he can smell that last banana bite in my mouth and I’m supposed to give it over. I let Blaine know later that we need to be careful about our own banana use.

My warning is forgotten and a couple of weeks later, Blaine walks into the living room with an evening snack for himself, a bowl of cereal with a cut up banana. He sits down on the sofa and is immediately overwhelmed with Tigger and Shadow bouncing all over his lap and trying to dive into his cereal bowl. It is amazing to watch two high energy rabbits bounce around so much and so fast they look like a pack of rabbits. After watching the show for a minute or so, I decide I had better respond to my husband’s howls for help. Fortunately, our pantry included some dried banana slices and I was able to lure our two addicts to another part of the room so that my husband could quickly consume his banana.

The moral is that bananas and rabbits are a combustible combination. Watch yourself if you ever plan to combine the two! Addicts are easily created and humans are in danger if they ever try to keep a bunny addict from the banana. To enjoy a banana now myself , I have to sneak out to the garage, patio or lock myself in a bathroom.

Get Off My Tail!

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Get Off My Tail Bumper Sticker

Click for Single Bumper Sticker

Get Off My Tail Bumper Sticker

Decorating our bunny supply cabinet

Get Off My Tail 10 Pack of Bumper Stickers

Click for 10 pack savings

Get Off My Tail 50 Pack of Bumper Stickers

Click for 50 pack savings

Blaine had an idea for a design: a line of hopping away hares called Receding Hare Line.
I created a couple of versions of artwork. Later while looking at the bumper sticker options available in our CafePress store, I realized a single line of the receding hares would work as a bumper sticker.

Get Off My Tail ! came quite quickly to mind for the wording. I really hate the tailgating traffic here in Atlanta that leads to quite a few accidents. Blaine and I have both been rear ended by drivers not paying attention.

It also occurred to me that this could be really great on lockers or cubicle walls. You can send a message you are stressed out by too much supervision. We have this on a file cabinet where we store a lot of bunny supplies. The message would be for our rabbits if they could read, since they dance around us like crazy when we go into the cabinet to get something for them.

This is currently our top-selling item in our CafePress shop. It is available as a single bumper sticker or in multi packs. So there are a couple of levels of discounted pricing available if you would like to purchase for a group or for resale.

Is a Real Rabbit For You?

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Four Rabbits

From istockphoto.com

Do you love mysteries?  A few years after Tigger and Shadow hopped into our lives, I read an article that said rabbits were a good pet for lovers of mystery.  The reason they gave is that rabbits aren’t very predictable.  You can expect them to do the unexpected.

I do love mysteries and rabbits.  The article was right on in saying rabbits aren’t an open book.  The photo here says it all for me.  Somebunny always has to be different and do the opposite of what is wanted or expected.  That can add a lot of fun and joy to your life as they go from comedy, to drama, to athletics, to romance, to all out bunny daredevil stunts. 

If you think about rabbits as a prey animal, the mystery of them makes a lot of sense.  If a potential attacker can figure out their next move, they will be lunch.

So when considering a rabbit as a pet, it is important to recognize they like to hide things.  That includes issues with their health.  A rabbit owner needs to like solving mysteries and playing detective.  To catch rabbit illnesses early on, you have to be aware of and catch sometimes slight changes in their mood, behavior, appetite or energy levels.

Rabbits are a lot of fun, but keeping them in peak form does require really getting to know them well when they are healthy and happy.  Then you can more easily recognize when your little friend is trying to hide a problem from you and help them before it is too late.

The Rabbittude Posse

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Rabbittude Posse

The Rabbittude Posse: Tigger, Portia, Shadow

The Rabbittude Posse is our current Rabbittude brand art.  You see the three bunnies here in our blog header and in the header we use most of the year for our Etsy shop.

Tigger and Shadow were obvious choices for this since they have been with us so long.  Portia was a sweet gray Chinchilla rescue rabbit we adopted.  She lived with us for just three years.  Then an unknown heart defect took her swiftly from us.

Why do we call this Rabbittude Posse?  They meet one urban definition: a group of friends, people who may or may not have your back.  Tigger and Shadow have always had a strange relationship.  You see bunnies in pictures all snuggled up together.  They do behave like that much of the time, but they also like to spend a lot of time apart.   Their relationship has been a bit on again, off again.  They have never sought to harm each other, but they fuss with each other at times.  They decidedly prefer to have separate cages when they need to be locked up.  When travelling to the vet, they prefer to be together.  They sit side by side in the carrier, one facing forward while the other faces back.  You can read the body language that they have banded together as buns against the world.   

During their longest off time, we had a really stupid idea.  We thought that bringing in a third bunny might be like bringing in a mediator.    Shadow was prepared to be friends until Portia bit him on the nose.  Tigger and Portia were hostile at first sight.  We never let them come together.  Shadow and Tigger did band together, against Portia who was quite happy to form her own bunny camp of one.  We ended up with separate rabbit territories.  Tigger and Shadow got the second and third floors.  Portia got the ground floor.  We humans were left navigating over and around multiple baby gates, making sure none of the rival rabbit gangs came together in a bunny rumble.

Although the three bunnies never hopped together physically, they all shared the same Rabbittude.  That is why we show them as a group in the artwork.  Early on with Rabbittude, many asked why we showed backsides of bunnies instead of cute faces.  Ah, that would not speak of rabbittude.  As prey animals, rabbits keep their eyes and ears sharply focused, always scanning for danger.  When you see bunny behinds, you are officially being dismissed and ignored by a rabbit as being of no consequence.   Usually, they are miffed.  We have lost count of the number of times we have found ourselves telling a rabbit, “Don’t you dare turn your back on me!”  That is usually followed by the rabbit giving a glance back over their shoulder with a sniff, before pointedly turning away again.  Ah rabbittude!

You can see the several versions of the Rabbittude Posse design on items in our CafePress store.  In our Etsy shop, the Rabbittude Posse appears on an ACEO (Art Card Editions and Originals) print.

What Is In A Name?

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Name Badge for Rebecca
The Daily Post at WordPress suggested looking into the story behind your given name as a blog topic.  There is a lot of story behind my given name.

For their first child, my parents had picked out the names Duncan or Robin.  I am glad I wasn’t a boy.  Mom says when I arrived, I didn’t look like a Robin.  I am not sure what a human Robin is supposed to look like, but apparently not me.  So instead they picked Rebecca which mom said meant enchantress.  She had liked the character Rebecca in Ivanhoe.  I will admit, I never read Ivanhoe, but I did read the CliffsNotes.  Rebecca in Ivanhoe is falsely accused of witchcraft.  It didn’t sound like my kind of tale, so I didn’t explore further.

During my school years, everyone wanted to know about my farm.  Mom must have been the only one to read Ivanhoe, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm was the fictional piece everyone else had heard of or read.  The count on that joke got quite high and was old after just a couple of times. 

Somewhere between birth and the teen years, the meaning of Rebecca was no longer listed as enchantress, but was  being defined as meaning heifer or cow.  That is just swell for friends of a teenage girl to find out.  I was no longer Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, but a cow on the farm.  I received a stuffed cow complete with udder as a gift from my boyfriend.  My eight year old brother had a  fascination for that cow and its udder.

So I was a bit concerned to do any research to see what the meaning might be listed as now.  It appears there is new confusion about whether Rebecca originates from Hebrew or Aramaic.  The meaning can change some in translation, depending on which you start out with.  So the current accepted meaning from one was listed as “noose”, while from the other language it is “to bind”.  I think I will go with “to bind”.

A list of nicknames for Rebecca really hit the mark though.  One of the nicknames was Bunny.