Foster bunnies Sushi and Serena are due to go back to the Rescue soon. They were originally only supposed to be with me for the winter and after all this time I will be sad to see them go, but I unfortunately I am not able to maintain three sets of bunnies at home long term. It is a problem of both space and time, especially with all the cleaning and trying to give them all a fair share of garden playtime every day. Many of the constraints would go away if I could combine two (or all three) of the groups, but group bondings are tricky enough to begin with without throwing Whisky's peculiarities into the mix.
Whisky did cope with Spangle, Porridge and Sprat last summer, when it was their rejection of him that was the problem (admittedly because of his social skills), but his attitude to other bunnies has changed since then and things are much more difficult.
But I didn't want to give up on the idea, especially since Whisky and the foster buns seem to be perfectly OK with sharing a room with just a mesh divider between them. So we had another session in the garden this week to see if there was any chance they could work things out. Sushi was still his usually soppy self, accepting of anybun (he will happily groom Whisky on request) and for once Whisky played nicely with him, but this time it was Serena's turn to make things difficult. She has a somewhat limited field of vision and insists on lunging teeth first at anything that comes suddenly close into view surprising her. Sushi is quite used to getting accidentally chomped, Whisky is not. And he didn't take too kindly to it either.
So Whisky was packed off back into the house, where he went back to his room to sulk, Sushi was allowed in as well to go back to hiding behind the sofa and poor confused Serena spent the rest of the afternoon wondering why she had been left to eat all the tasty grass by herself again. Not that she complained.
Sushi is going to miss that little spot behind your sofa!
ReplyDeleteAwwww, Serena. When will you ever learn--it's "sniff first", not chomp!
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