Never underestimate a rabbit. We thought this bin to block the side of the refrigerator was great, but she did hop up on top.

Right from the start, we knew we were in trouble with Tigger. She was a baby bunny when we brought her home. We found out quickly we had two pounds of sheer determination. Tigger would sit up on her hind legs and look around at things.  The next thing we knew, she was going where she had been looking.

She would hop on top of her cage, hop from there on to a desk and from there up to the shelves of the hutch on the desk. One time she scaled the wall behind the desk by climbing up between the wall and the privacy screen that formed the back of the desk. I came in to the room and saw just the tips of her ears peaking above the desk and the bottom of one paw hanging below the back of the desk.

When she wasn’t using items to springboard from one to another, she was taking running starts and flying leaps. We would see her in position like a runner with an intense look and then she would go flying off. One time my husband was lying on the guest bed in her room and saw her with that look. He had just enough time to say “NO!” and the next instant he was sucking bunny tummy as she landed on his face. Another time she took a flying leap over the 27″ baby gate in the doorway of her room and took off racing around our apartment.  I had been sleeping in that Sunday morning, when Blaine shook me awake exclaiming, “Help! She’s loose in the apartment and I can’t catch her!”

We often said that we would not have been surprised to come in to a room and actually see her hanging by her paws from the ceiling fan. She just seemed to know no boundaries. I really didn’t think we were going to make it to one year with her.

Thought we had this shelf blocked with a big bin, but there she goes!

Tigger would also commando crawl and shimmy into any space she could squeeze into. We have had to dig her out from under bookshelves, the TV stand, the sofa …  Once we made the mistake of trying to put Tigger and Shadow’s cages on a low platform when we read it was good to have the rabbits at least a little above floor level to protect them from drafts. The platform had a gap down the center of just 2″ x 3″ and sure enough, in Tigger went. The platform went bye, bye quickly.

We had sliding closet doors that were on tracks at the top but hung free at the bottom. Somehow, Tigger figured out that if she bounced against the inner door it would swing in and she could run into the brief space created between the doors and get into the closet. We were terrified when we saw her do it, so afraid we were going to see her smashed between the doors if her timing was off. We blocked access to the closet door fronts immediately.

Now it is ten years later, and we are glad to have our tiny terror and her sidekick still with us. In all the years and all the stunts, we have been fortunate to have only had one scraped side and one strained leg between them.

If you ever bring home a high energy bunny bent on extreme stunts, you will need maximum bunnyproofing.   More later on the most vital need for successful bunnyproofing …