Friday 18 December 2009

'S No Fun

Well, not much activity on this blog for a few weeks. I mostly blame the weather. We have just lived through a month of rain, which has meant miserable bunnies staring out from underneath hutches and inside sheds not wanting to come out and play (well, the sensible ones anyway). But the rain has now passed, replaced with frost and snow. Oh joy.

And not just a little bit of snow. It kicked off with about 10cm in 6 hours. So this weekend I am, basically, snowed in. I cannot get to the Rescue (in fact Royston has been on the news as one of the worst hit towns in the region) so I have taken up residence on the sofa for a few days with the TV, my laptop and occasionally some very grumpy bunnies.

The snow appears to have brought great joy to many of my colleagues, neighbours and friends, who are spending their days away from work/school frolicking in cold wet sludge. Caroline tells me the bunnies at the Rescue are also enjoying themselves, running madly about and playing in the curious white blanket that covers the ground, the like of which many of them have never seen before.

My own opinion of snow is more like that of Alex P. Keaton. And, once again proving that Caroline does an excellent job matching bunnies to people, S+J are totally with me on this.

Santa has been grumpy for weeks as the temperature has been gradually dropping. One morning he failed to notice me come in with his breakfast as he was so busy re-arranging the hay in his bedroom to try and make himself warmer (also partly my fault – I may have over-compensated with the straw earlier in the week and they pretty much had to burrow their way back in to go to bed). He doesn’t like the cold. When he woke up to thick snow Friday morning, he peered at it suspiciously from the doorway before seeming to decide that he was “cold enough thank you very much” and disappeared back inside refusing to come out of the shed for the rest of the day.

Jemima also hates snow. With her short Rex fur already giving her little protection and consequently regular problems with sore feet, she can’t bear to walk on anything cold or wet. She came bounding out, but as soon as her feet hit the snow she panicked, flew across the garden at great speed and disappeared into the house. When it came time to put bunnies back in their house, I couldn’t persuade her to come out of mine.

We all became a little more accustomed to the weather over the course of the weekend. By Sunday, all three of us were willing to spend up to several minutes in the garden, though it was inevitably followed with some quality time indoors in front of the radiator. Once her nose was dry, Jemima went on to her daily task of making all the hay disappear, while Santa decided to work on his on-going project to find the highest lagomorphically-accessible point in the lounge. Via a pile of cushions, the back of the sofa and a bookshelf he managed to surpass his previous record by about a foot and seemed very proud of himself.

It doesn’t look like the weather is going to clear this side of Xmas, which probably means more days of disapproval from the little ones, but at least I am having more time to spend with them. Still, I can’t wait til the roads clear and I can get back to the Rescue – or maybe Santa (the other one) will bring me a new 4x4 car for Xmas? Here’s hoping.