Crazy bunny people unite! :)

Went to the annual meeting of the House Rabbit Connection for the first time yesterday. The HRC is the MA & CT chapter of the House Rabbit Society, and they do loads of wonderful work with shelters, rescues, and vets taking in rabbits and finding them good forever homes. I've been a member for quite a few years. Unfortunately, many of their activities take place too far from where I live for me to participate, but the meeting location was only an hour-and-a-half's drive, so I decided to give it a go.

I'm guessing there were about 20-25 people there altogether, and it was nice to get a chance to chat in person with other bunny people, especially people as crazy about rabbits as I am. I even got to meet Dana Gillin of Bunny Blab fame; she manages the HRC website and took pictures and filmed the meeting. She was very nice and politely let me ramble on about this blog and about Mickey. The guest speaker did a nice presentation about rabbit nutrition and acupuncture and chiropractic work on rabbits. She even demonstrated her chiropractic technique on the rabbit of one of the HRC board members, although he was doing his best to upstage her. I wish I'd brought my camera and taken pictures (my phonecam would not have done it justice), but hopefully, it'll be up on the website soon for people to see.

Afterwards, there were refreshments, a raffle, bunny stuff on sale and even some bunny knickknacks offered for free to HRC members. I bought two necklaces and a wood toy for Mickey, and picked out a lovely ceramic rabbit and a cute magnet out of the free stuff. Pictures of those will be posted here as soon as I get a chance to take some, but since I don't have any yet (and it wouldn't be a Z of B post without a picture), here's one of us on the couch taken a while back:

Birthday and Other Updates

The new cage arrived today. I hadn't planned on putting it together until Sunday, but the sight of the big unopened box just kept nagging at me until I couldn't take it any longer, so there I was at 11:30 at night prying the box open and fiddling with galvanized steel cage sides and plastic clips. The clips did make it way easier to assemble, so it didn't take long to put it together and get Mickey and his stuff inside:

Positives:

1. LOTS more room for Mickey to move around.

2. Cage sits on litter tray, easy to keep clean.

Negatives:

1. The door opens IN instead of out. I understand the reason why (so wascally wabbit can't open the door by accident and get out) but it's going to be a pain in the butt when it's time to feed him. I used to have a cage with a door like this for Karnage and it was annoying as all get out to try to keep that door hooked up when it needed to be open.

2. It's going to be a little harder to reach in and get Mickey when it's time for snuggling.

I have put a straw mat and a couple of plastic floor covers down so there's no chance of his feet getting sore. If it wasn't for the fact that he is a lazy bun and doesn't always bother to get his bunny butt into his litterbox, I would cover the entire floor, but I have found that if the floor is covered, he ends up smearing cecum all over himself and whatever's covering the cage floor--which means more butt baths, which means seriously grumpy bunny.

Mickey wasn't exactly sure what to make of the new cage. He was more interested in gnawing at the bars in the hopes of getting a treat at first, then discovered he could pull back on the cage door and then let go so it would smack back into the side of the cage. One of the cage clips solved that problem. He hopped in and out of the litterbox, then checked out the straw mat and the floor covers, then had a nibble of the lettuce in his dish before finally giving it the "stretch test".

So far, it's all met with his approval, but I'm not tossing the old cage until I'm sure this one will work out.

In other news, Mickey has made a guest appearance in the blog The Bunny Funnies , which posts pictures of rabbits found on the internet. I follow the site on Twitter, and apparently they liked the picture of Mickey that I use as my Twitter icon, because it appeared on Monday under the caption "Sports Fan" . I was quite surprised to see it there, but I let them know that I had no problem with it.

One last tidbit: my son actually held Mickey for the first time in a long time last night. I was having a snuggle session on the couch with Mr. Mick when the boy came in and, without warning, scooped up Mickey and sat down with him in the recliner. This was quite a surprise, as the boy has made it clear that he doesn't hold Mickey because of the amount of fur he sheds. On top of that, he was wearing his favorite football shirt, so you'd think that he wouldn't want to risk it getting chewed or shredded by digging. When I pointed it out, he shrugged and said it was no big deal, he could clean the fur off.

Mickey really didn't know what to make of this turn of events; I kept getting a look that said, "Are you going to let him do this to me?!" until he finally realized he was getting petted and it wasn't so bad, then he settled down and was fine. He even tried to lick my son's face a couple of times, but the boy wasn't having any of that. Finally, the boy said he'd had enough and handed Mickey back to me so he could go clean off his shirt. Mickey immediately set about licking my face, whether to reassure me that I was still his favorite or simply because he needed to lick someone, I'm not sure.

Happy *yawn* Birthday

Sunday was Mickey's 3rd birthday.

As you can see, it was a low-key celebration.

He was gracious enough to let my husband have the spotlight during the day for Father's Day, as long as he got all the attention in the evening. Festivities included: cage cleaning, butt bath, hours of snuggling and a romp in the dining room/exercise yard.

Well, maybe "romp" is a bit strong of a word. "Loaf" is more like it.

Seriously, he's a lazy bun most of the time, but he was especially loungey that night. Maybe all the snuggling tired him out.

The boy and I tried to coax him out of his hidey-hole after a while, but he just went and found himself another one.

Finally, we figured it out; he was sulking because he hadn't gotten his birthday present yet. So we gave it to him: his very own indoor clover patch.

He was a little hesitant at first when he saw it...

"This is organically-grown, right? I can't be upsetting my tummy with any of that common stuff."

...but finally, he took a sniff...

...and then a nibble...

...and then plunged headlong in and stuffed himself silly.

He was too excited about the clover to pay attention when I told him about his other gift: a new and larger cage, which has been ordered and will be here soon. While his current cage is still large enough for him to stretch out in, a little more room would be better for him, so I measured the available space and got the biggest cage I could get to fill that spot. I just hope the darn thing's as "easy to assemble" as they say it is.

I was planning to tell Mickey's story here in honor of his birthday, but that will have to wait for later in the week.

The Rabbit from Hell

One of the ladies in my water aerobics class approached me last week and asked me if I would like a rabbit-shaped planter that someone had given her. Of course, I accepted. She said she would bring it with her to the next class and give it to me, then added, "I must warn you, though--it's the rabbit from hell."

I asked her what she meant, and she said that she didn't know why, but it was an unnerving piece. She thought it might be the red eyes or the expression on its face, but there was something about it that just bothered her a little.

I didn't think much of it until I got to see it, and then I understood:

This is the strangest image of a rabbit that I have ever seen--and I'm not quite sure it is a rabbit, the body shape and facial structure look more like that of a hare. The eyes are made of dark red glass with a black "iris", clearly an attempt to create an albino appearance(and why use an albino rabbit for something like this? A real albino rabbit can be creepy to some people, a fake albino rabbit is creepy to most people.). They're a little small for the space they're supposed to fit in; and they bulge out enough to make the poor thing look quite odd; it might have been better had the artist painted them in instead.

The ear positioning is equally confounding; it's possible that the artist wanted to make a lop-eared rabbit, but the facial structure doesn't look very lop-ish. It almost looks like the poor thing is scared out of its mind and trying to hide from something--not exactly a pleasant image for a planter.

Then I got a look at it head-on:

Yeah, that's a face even a momma bunny would have a hard time loving. I can see how he would give someone the willies. At the moment, he's on my dining room table holding a potted orchid that I was given, but I'm thinking I may have to move him to my patio because he's a bit large for the table...and yes, he's just a wee bit creepy.