I love Muffy in this video. Watch for her solution to a problem.
In case the video isn’t working properly, here is the YouTube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LE9OXATfF0o
I love Muffy in this video. Watch for her solution to a problem.
In case the video isn’t working properly, here is the YouTube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LE9OXATfF0o
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.
I could not resist this wildlife challenge theme. Have I got a fun bunny rabbit photo coming for you later today! Check back to see it and have a laugh.
Using the Twitter idea of Follow Friday, I am going to share two things today that I love and recommend.
Here is the intro provided on the site for my first,
The Bad Bunny List:
The Bad Bunny List (241 kB, 24 pages) is a list of phrases rabbit ownees should get their naughty pets to write on a blackboard a la Bart Simpson. If you could get them to write…
I found this list just after we brought Tigger home 10 years ago in mid May. I was searching online for help in dealing with our new baby bunny’s destructive tendencies and her ability to manage to get everywhere we were trying to keep her out of, off of, or away from.
This list had me in tears laughing. I think the humor of dealing with a house rabbit can be greatly appreciated by all animal lovers. However, if you want to check out their other bad pet lists, here is the home page link: http://www.badpets.net/BadPets/index.html.
As a brand new rabbit parent after a long period without the thump of bunny feet around the house, the list was instructive. Tigger was already showing herself to be over the top with her desire to get into things and way beyond my experience to keep up mentally with what she might try next. I needed serious help in bunnyproofing to keep her safe and maintain my sanity dealing with an animal who seemed to have a suicidal streak.
Reading this list, I would laugh and then look at Tigger and think, “You just might try that and I better find a way to deal with it!” The Bad Bunny list provided me with so much information on things I could not have imagined a rabbit might try. I was much better prepared to deal with rascally rabbittude rabbits after reading the list.
Later today, I will share an artist I like to follow.
This is something that the children of friends find to be fascinating when they visit. We have quite a bunny rabbit collection in our half bath. There are stuffed rabbits, figurines, pictures on the wall, a folded baby blanket as a shelf runner, a fleece bunny rabbit cover for the keenex box …
Counting them all is really quite tricky:
It is a fun exercise that doesn’t have a clearly definable answer. It is somewhere between 37 and 150, depending on how you count them. Without realizing what I was creating, my half bath has become the essence of bunnyness. Rabbits like to come and go, now you see them and now you don’t. Sometimes they are in plain view but hidden from clear observation. In the wild they live in large groups and multiply rapidly.
Welcome to Rabbittude! Now don’t let the rabbits distract you too much from the task at hand, please flush and wash your hands before exiting.
Shadow hopped into the office and around my feet and sat up on his hind legs looking at me. He wanted me to follow him. He led me out onto the landing and just sat there looking up at me, so I sat down on the floor and after a minute laid flat on the floor on my stomach to get closer to him and be able to see him eye to eye.
That is when Shadow began his game of ring around Mom. He would hop around me in a circle, stop at my head and look me in the eyes. He hopped around me a number of times. Sometimes when he stopped at my face he would just look me in the eyes, other times, he would hop closer and give me a kiss. I would pet his head and then he would take off again on his hop around me. He played this game for several minutes before racing off to other bunny pursuits while I returned to work.
Most people picture having a rabbit as a snuggle bunny to pick up and hold and walk around hugging. Estimates by rabbit groups are that only about 5% of rabbits like to be picked up and held. The others react as if the eagle has swooped down and captured them. They fight for dear life, kicking, scratching and biting. As a baby, Tigger was like trying to hold a twirling Tasmanian Devil. I could hold on to her barely as she somersalted and whirled around feverishly in my arms, leaving scratches everywhere her paws connected. I would come away looking like I had been mauled and she was just a two and a half pound baby bunny.
I shared this story of Shadow to show how wonderful the interaction with a rabbit can be if you learn to read their body language and put yourself on their level. The relationship and mutual understanding shared then is just so fun and loving.
Ten years ago, sometime between now and the first week of May, Mr. Shadow was born. We brought him home on Independence Day when he was two months or so old. He bounced into our lives with such joyous abandon. He always keeps us smiling.
He still runs around like a crazy bunny, but not as often or fast. He still wants to hop onto everything and leap from furniture piece to furniture piece. The bunny spirit is very willing, but the body can’t keep up anymore and he has started to miss the mark. We aren’t fond of looking at bunny x-rays at the vet. So we keep a close eye on his activities. We relocate him as a distraction when he is clearly thinking about training for the bunny Olympics one more time.
Seriously, as rabbit lovers, this was irresistible. Twitter users started sharing the link over the weekend for International Carrot Day, April 4th. Logically, an Etsy treasury devoted to carrots had to follow, with a few carrot loving rabbits too.
Here’s a carrot fact from Bugs Bunny cartoon history. The voice of Bugs, Mel Blanc, hated carrots. They tried all kinds of fruits and vegetables to see if biting in and crunching something else could sound like a carrot. Nothing but a carrot sounded like a carrot. So Mel would bite in and crunch on the carrots and then spit them out.
Sorry Mel, but for us it is time to pause and get our paws on some lovely carrots!
At Rabbittude, we are always up for a good laugh year round, so we would wish for more than one day dedicated to silliness, laughter and fun. Ah, well, that is why we have bunnies to keep us going with foolishness in between. We will make do with the day we have to be our completely quirky, wacky selves today.
Here is a treasury I created of wonderful lighthearted fun things made by Etsy artisans: Silly Rabbit’s & Friends for April Fool’s Day.
Great Blog Post Alert! The Rabbittude Get Off My Tail bumper sticker has been included in this wonderful Feature Friday blog by Frostings sharing humorous Etsy items for April Fool’s Day: http://tncakes.blogspot.com/2011/04/feature-friday-april-fools-day.html. It is wonderful to be included here, but I am not posting it here just to brag (okay, bragging just a little bit). I think this is a great list of Etsy items, they all made me laugh and smile. I am really partial to the take off on Keep Calm and Carry On created by Sad Little Crown, Fling Yourself on the Bed and Cry Uncontrollably. It reminds me so much of Despair.com’s parody of beautiful photo art motivational training posters. Sometimes the motivational stuff just really doesn’t do it and you have to let it all out and then move on. ~Rebecca Pullin
It was a blast this morning participating in a treasury blitz for the Georgia Etsy team. Our goal was to increase the visibility of Georgia Etsy team shops, all based in Georgia USA. We had a number of team members creating treasuries, clicking and commenting on the treasuries and promoting them on their other teams and social networks. It was a flurry of treasury activity between 7 and 10 am this morning.
Around noon, more than a dozen of the treasuries had made it to the top ten pages of the Etsy Treasury. That is so wonderful to see when there are currently over 24,000 treasuries. We are celebrating that all three of the Rabbittude treasuries made it to page seven or above, with the Nature Walk Finds making it to page two! Georgia Etsy Team Caption Mod MomMe had all three of her treasuries make it to page one: Honey and Chocolate, Simply Seafoam, She Is Beautiful. Awesome! We are honored that our new butter yellow freshwater pearl bunny rabbit bracelet was featured in the Honey and Chocolate treasury.
This was a golden opportunity to meet some new Georgia friends online and help to promote each other. I hope this will be an activity that we can continue in the future and bring more views and sales to all the wonderful artisans on the team.
Due to the Georgia Blitz and the start of spring, Rabbittude has been included in a baker’s dozen of treasuries during the past day, the Honey and Chocolate listed above and these other lovely treasuries:
We are honored to have been included. Click on them and enjoy not only Rabbittude, but all the other wonderful Etsy artisans this spring.