You Are What You Wear

I have a coat and hat next to the back door that I always wear in the winter when I go outside to do anything with my garden bunnies. But then the weather suddenly changes and I nip out for the first time in months without said coat and hat...

"Argh! Something in the matrix has changed!" exclaims Jemima and refuses to come out of the shed for breakfast. ("Is that his going to the vets outfit? I can't remember, it's been a while...")

Or maybe it's just me and my bunnies. All of them. Last year after he went through a patch of being regularly rushed to emergency appointments at the vets with breathing problems, Whisky decided that any time he saw me talking on the phone and looking at him intently he had better go hide somewhere. Similarly he assumes something is amiss if he sees me upstairs with my outdoor shoes on.

I love bunnies. I especially love them after running round the house for 20 minutes in a blind panic because they've disappeared, eventually finding them curled up hiding in a closed drawer that you only looked in out of desperation, before realising they've found a sneaky way into it from the back. Love 'em.

Well anyway, I don't have any pictures for any of that. So here's one of Sushi landing a super-fast, mad binky in the garden on Saturday (complete with a bit of extra Photoshopped background blur to make it look even faster!).

Snow Bound

"This white stuff? Again??"

"Oh well, if we MUST play in it.."

"Weeeeeeeeee!!!!!!"

Hello 2012

Last year was a busy one for the Rescue and 2012 is looking like being no less crazy. So here's a quick look at what's going on and what we have coming up.

Last year Vicki and Colin started the process of turning the Rescue into a fully blown registered charity. The last few months have involved lots of researching and form filling but it looks like their hard work has paid off and we have finally reached the application submission stage. If we are granted full charitable status it will be a big boost for the Rescue as it will open up opportunities to apply for grants, as well as receiving more money from donations through additional tax relief. All in all it should be a good thing for the Rescue, we just have the anxious stage waiting to hear if our application was successful.

Next on the agenda for 2012 is re-applying for our planning permission to be extended so we can remain on our current site. More hard work and form-filling for Colin! Our last application in 2010 was granted for two years and since then our relationship with the local neighbourhood has been mostly positive, so fingers crossed we will be granted at least another two years before we need to re-apply.

It has taken some time, but we are nearing the point where all our rabbit warrens have predator-proof enclosures so our residents can have lots of space to run around in even when there are no volunteers on site to keep an eye on them. This month we used some of the extra money we received in seasonal donations to purchase three more walk-in aviaries. A big thank you to all the generous friends of the Rescue that made this possible and to Paul and his team at Aviary World for all their hard work making and assembling them!

We still have a bit of work to do to make them "dig resistant", but it is all looking good. Our next phase is to re-start the work to move the other warren spaces over to the opposite side creating a path down the centre of the Rescue, thus making cleaning and bunny-viewing more practical. So if anyone out there is good at DIY and/or moving fences and would like to offer their time let us know!

We are always at capacity on site at the Rescue, so to cover emergencies we sometimes utilise space in the houses of the senior team. To put that another way, if you are an experienced rabbit person who volunteers at the rescue every week, there is a good chance that at some point Caroline will call you to ask if some extra bunnies could live in your spare room for a while. Since September we have had an unusually high number of pregnant does and unwanted litters handed in so many of these have gone to live off site until they are ready to be re-homed. As they become more mature, the young ones start to show aggressive or amorous behaviours and need to be separated. Practically this often means they are returned to the Rescue or switched with a younger litter, but this means they are taking up more space. The knock-on effect is that the waiting list for rabbits coming in is now moving slower. It also means more neutering costs which means the Rescue is under more pressure than ever - we are really going to appreciate that extra donation money when the charity status is confirmed!

New young bun Champ

Another positive change for the new year is that we have had a sudden surge of new volunteers. We now have a sizeable Saturday cleaning team of young and enthusiastic people, eager to be put to work. This is a big, big help, especially since us oldies are starting to creak when we have to bend down to clean those bunny bungalows! Thanks team! :-)

As for our existing residents, they are all doing well and I think enjoying the (so far) mild winter! As I wrote in my previous post, some of the elderly and vulnerable buns went to volunteers for the colder winter months to live as house rabbits, where they are all having fun causing all sorts of chaos. One of those pairs was Ragdoll and Timmy, who went to stay with Nicola and Gareth, as Timmy's health has been going downhill for some time. Very sadly, Timmy passed away on Thursday morning. He was another very precious bun and we will all miss him terribly.

I have no idea what has prompted it, but I swear our wilder residents are braver in 2012. Whereas previously some would exercise a degree of caution around me when at breakfast time, the quieter ones now take food out of my hand and the bolder ones will happily barge me out the way to help themselves from the food bucket before I have a chance to put anything in their bowls!

Pea. Or Pod. Or maybe Cosmos. Possibly Goofy

So here we go, another new year of exciting possibilities at the Rescue. I would just like to end this by saying thank you to everyone for your support in 2011 and we look forward to seeing you all in 2012!

Fluffularily Played?

Did you ever have something happen to you where at the time it all seemed so reasonable, but thinking back on it you suddenly realised you totally got "played"?! So here's what happened to me this month, the story of which, I later found out, is similar to that of several of the regular volunteers.

There I am, working away scraping wee-soaked shavings from the corner of some shed or other when Caroline appears as-if-by-magic beside me.

"You know all these litters of oh-so-cute baby bunnies we suddenly have?" she says, all casually and what-not. "Well, I've been thinking how vulnerable they are in the cold outdoors of the Rescue and how they might benefit from being indoors for the winter months. I wonder if some of the volunteers might consider taking them in for a while..."

So later that afternoon, after some careful consideration of the logistics of having a group of tiny floofy joy-bundles somewhere in my house I say to Caroline "Well, I guess, if they're all small an' all, and are happy to live mostly in one of those big cages I have for emergencies, I guess, maybe I could squeeze them in somewhere in my house..."

"Great!" Caroline says, "We'll sort that out next week!".

But by next week, Caroline has been thinking again. "You know what?" she says. "You know who would really benefit from being indoors - some of our elderly bunnies! You wouldn't mind taking them instead would you...?"

So the next thing I know, instead of having a cage of cute little munchkins causing excitable (but contained) chaos in the corner of one room, I have:

• Whisky giving me grief because I've given half his room to Sushi and Serena for the winter.
• Grumpy glares from Jemima and Elvis because they are having to share garden time with yet another pair of bunnies.

Whisky getting his grump on over

sharing his newly partitioned room

Not that I can complain too much - of all the pairs at the Rescue, Sushi and Serena are one of the friendliest. And apart from all the extra sweeping, they are not exactly high maintenance (they do like to spread the hay from their litter trays all over the floor before they eat it).

So it seemed like I didn't come out too badly from the last-minute switch, but the story doesn't end there. Two weeks after they move in, I get a text message from Caroline.

"Can I borrow that cage you didn't use? Another unwanted litter of babies just handed in..."

But guess what? By the time Caroline arrived at my house the plan had changed once more. Instead of loading my cage into her car, we ended up loading the bunnies into my cage. In my spare room. [sigh]

So there you go. That's how I went from living with three quiet bunnies to having, after some subtle manipulation from Caroline, a houseful of chaos. It is also why once again I've found myself with no time to take photo's or write much about the Rescue this month.

Still, I may be constantly exhausted and spending all my time cleaning up after somebun or other, but when hard work looks like this it's hard to resent it!

The moment Sushi notices that Jemima

is watching him with disapproving interest

Serena remembering how annoying muddy feets

can be after two weeks indoors

"I am Meeko. And you are...?"

Shanti, Pikachu, Mr Magoo, Pooki and Meeko

A Whiter Shade of Floof

Some floofy white babies came in this week, along with their mother and older siblings from the previous litter. If you are still reading these words now I'd be surprised cos if you're anything like me your eyes just keep being drawn back to those tiny bundles of squee...[sigh]

Foxy Lady

There are three very important reasons why your rabbit run might need a roof. They are:

• Jumping
• Climbing
• Flying

I'm not talking about the rabbits, even though they are quite capable of all three (or at least, I've met a number of bunnies who appeared to THINK they could fly). I'm talking about those creatures that would seek to do your bunnies harm.

To better illustrate this point to recent enquirers, one of my colleagues spent some time on YouTube searching for some helpful videos to demonstrate and found these:

Jumping:
I can't jump over the fence

Climbing:
Foxes can climb

Flying:
Rabbit Outsmarts Falcon
(Don't get too excited - this was the one video I found in this genre where the outcome was anything short of horrific.)

So there you go. Today we have learned why a run needs a roof, why it may not be safe to leave bunnies playing outside in the garden all day and that a fox is a cross between a cat and a dog. Who said this blog isn't educational?!

Double Paw-Fist Strike

Purdy, Hopppy and Whisky share a quick snack
before getting back to the business of fighting.

Well, that didn't work. We tried to find Whisky a new friend (or friends), but all he did was learn new ways to express his lack of bunny social skills.

Being a bunny with no incisors (front teeth), he can be a little outmatched when meetings with other bunnies turn hostile. His new trick for balancing the odds is to pre-emptively pummel them on the nose with his front paws when they are least expecting it, leap on them while they are still surprised, kick them in the back of the head and run off. It started as a response to the unfriendliness of the first girl we tried him with, but once he got the hang of it, and possibly because the first one was such a moo, he decided to apply it to any future bunny he met that looked at him funny. Or thought of looking at him funny. Or had eyes.

Consequently the rest of the bonding attempts did not go well for Whisky, the last one so much so it ended at the vets having his perineum stitched back together. Ouch.

So poor little Whisky is very sad. He has to suffer pain while his injuries heal, the indignity of being force-fed medicines and the loneliness now he doesn't even have foster bunnies sharing his room to glare at. But at least he is home again and I get to cuddle him every day, even if it's only long enough to empty a syringe full of anti-biotics into his mouth.