The big news at home this week is that, after more than two years living in my house as foster rabbits, I finally conceded that Anouska and Bobbit are family and formally adopted them.
I tried to get the bunnies excited about it by splitting a celebratory strawberry with them, but as he slowly and begrudgingly ate his bit Bobbit just looked at me all disappointed, then asked why he wasn't getting a carrot stick instead. I think that pretty much sums up our relationship right there. [sigh]
A bonus post for you today with a quick update on my foster pair Anouska and Bobbit.
A trip to the emergency vet Wednesday night and motility meds failed to get Anouska eating again so on Thursday the two of them went for a stay at our regular vets. A conscious x-ray revealed no serious problems, fluids, pain relief and more motility meds followed until Friday morning when things started moving again. They came home Friday evening, both a bit grumpy from the experience but eating. By Saturday Anouska seemed to have taken a few more steps towards recovery but by then Bobbit was acting oddly and not eating much. At the end of another stressful day, Bobbit wouldn't eat his pellets but just managed to avoid a trip back to the vets when he started to pick at some carrot and parsley.
Well, it was a proper relief this morning when both came racing to the breakfast bowl and tucked in. And although he wants nothing to do with me today, I am very happy that Bobbit seems back to his old self and Anouska is further improved.
Life after Whisky has been about as difficult as you can imagine. So much of my everything was built around him, from the daily routines between getting up and out the house in the morning to the arrangement of any free time I had to make sure I was back home for medicines or whatever. Every day brings with it "first time without..." moments - first time coming home to a house without him in it, first lazy Sunday without him laid out in the sunny patch by the window snoozing, first Dr Who without him sat there next to me (or upstairs grumping about something). There are less of them each day, but the levels of sadness have been boosted as the last of his test results came in and finally when I went to collect his ashes.
I don't want to go on about the sad parts too much, this isn't the place. Here we should be looking back at his life and feeling happy that he brought us so much joy, what an amazing little boy he was.
But still, for me there's the "What next?" to consider. My heart and my bank balance need some time to recover, I don't plan on adopting any more rabbits any time soon. I figure though that if foster bunnies Bobbit and Anouska are going to continue living in my house for the foreseeable future it is only fair that they move into Whisky's old room, it being twice the size of theirs.
So on New Years Day, that's what we did. With a mixture of their furniture and what was already in there, they moved in and now have around 120 square foot of bedroom as their own space. Being the only bunnies in the house now, they also gained proper free-roaming privileges when I am around to supervise, or at least to listen out for mischief. So far they are confining themselves to the upstairs of the house, when that changes I am sure chaos will reign. (Anouska does venture half way down the stairs on occasion but for reasons I am unsure of she won't yet go to the bottom.)
They definitely seem happy with their new room. Anouska has more things to shred and dig in, Bobbit has lots more places to hide. But of course the final approval wasn't given until they'd established that it came with the same menu and level of service.
I had a week away from work and the Rescue this week, my annual 'holiday', but having an awkward little fluff who can't be left or taken anywhere I never go far.
It was a wet miserable week so my loosely planned day trips were cancelled, along with plans of spending time in the garden repainting and fixing up the outdoor bunny accommodation while little ones played and snacked on the grass.
Today finally looks like being sunny so we might actually get outside, but the fosters and Whisky can't go out at the same time, so now I have the problem of trying to fit everybun's needs into one day...
On second thoughts, maybe it will be easier to keep them all happy than I thought...
So, what have the bunnies been up to today? Have they been good? Getting some healthy exercise? Being productive?
So that's it is it foster buns? Mischief, laziness and lying to your foster dad? Well I think it's time you learned a little from my boy Whisky!
Er...well at least you're honest. I'll go get the carpet shampooer.
Over the Xmas break I decided to give foster buns Anouska and Bobbit a big box to play with. Or rather in - it was quite a big box.
When it comes to enclosed spaces, bunnies always like to have multiple exits. This is to provide lots of escape routes in the event of an incursion by predators or annoying owners with combs and claw clippers. So I cut three holes in the box, one in each end and one in the front. I also put a bendy-stick tunnel in to make it even more warreny. It looks like this:
I left the 'back' intact, i.e. no holes, to make it at least slightly enclosed. At least that was the theory. However, here is a picture of the back as it looks today:
As we all know, bunnies love projects, especially bunstruction (or rather bun-destruction) projects. I shouldn't be surprised.
So that was that. Other than that, today was just another lazy Sunday with the bunnies. Hang on, I'm sure I'm forgetting something...
OK, Anouska, OK! I don't have any new pictures from the Rescue, but I'm sure Whisky has some great ideas for...
...napping. Oh. Oh well. Try again tomorrow?
Today on the blog was going to be a happy tale all about how sweet Whisky has been recently, regularly joining me on the sofa to watch TV or take naps. But it is not. Why?
Did you ever suddenly and unexpectedly find yourself sat in a warm puddle of wee (that wasn't your own)? I did. On the sofa this morning.
So let's take a vote shall we? Who thinks naughty bunnies who empty their bladder while sitting right next to someone on the sofa should even get their own Sunday blog post?
Well I tell you what Whisky, I'll think about that while I wait for the machine to finish washing all of my clothes.
Anouska had been trying a variety ways to keep cool this summer during the heat, preferring not to rely on just the ice pods and frozen water bottles I give them.
It took me a while to realise why the water bowl had so much fur in it every day when I changed it, until finally I found her one morning sleeping with her ear in it. Understandable, the bowl is nice and cool after it has been rinsed and refilled, and of course it's not always the head end that needs cooling down...
Our freezer packed up some time ago so we were very excited to get a new one this week. There's no food in it yet though:- along with many other bunny households across the country right now, ours is filled with ice pods and old plastic bottles of frozen water, waiting to be deployed.
Sundays need to be a bit lazy. I'm sure it's a law or something.
Sunny weather accompanies our laziness here today, so Anouska and Bobbit had a bright and pleasant session in the garden this morning. Not entirely as relaxed as I'd like, I think a few passing cars and screechy birds have spooked them recently, making them more wary when they are outside. But they still managed to get a good bit of exercise and chomping in.
Whisky has been taking it easy today. He was taken off all antibiotics and eye-drops this week so the vet can do some cultures on the stuff that oozes out of his eye and nose. His face is consequently a bit messy and needs multiple daily cleans, but it hasn't slowed him down at all, including his snacking rate.
And of course he hasn't lost any bit of his mischievous sense of humour either...
During outdoor playtime, Bobbit does chow down on grassy delights, but mostly he likes to stretch his legs:
Whereas, while we do get the odd stiff-old-bun binky out of Anouska, mostly she uses her time for filling up on foliage:
So, you are taking nice steady pictures with your awesome bunny camera. But they still don't look as good as they could and you are starting to think it's something to do with how they are composed. Maybe you just don't have the 'artists eye' needed to spot a good picture? Or maybe you do (Hint: You do!) but you just haven't figured out how to realise it? Or maybe all you need is this week's Fursday Foto Tip! And this fifth tip is without doubt the most important tip I will give you...
When you start out with bunny photography, don't worry about perfectly composing pictures. This is the digital age - just make sure you have everything in the picture and crop it later.
Yes that's right, this weeks tip is simple. After you've taken your lots of pictures and chucked out the ones with nothing interesting in, crop the rest to show off the interesting things.
So first of all, what is cropping? Well, quite simply, it's when you draw a rectangle somewhere in the middle of your picture, cut round it and throw the outside bit away - the aim being to leave you with a well balanced, better-looking (if a little smaller) picture! It's the most basic tool in all photo-editing software(Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, Gimp...), most photo-organising software (iPhoto, Aperture, the free ones that come with your camera...) and is even built in to most other software that allows you to insert pictures (like MS Word and Outlook).
Why do we want to crop? Well, actually, ideally we don't! And the longer you do this bunny photography thing the easier it gets to spot exactly what picture you want and where to put the camera to get it without messing around with it too much after. But that only comes through experience and occasionally a bit of luck. Of my pictures you see on this blog and Facebook, although some are cropped in some way I'd say these days about three quarters are the full picture that I took. To figure out where in the picture I wanted the bunny, how far away, with how much of the background etc, this I worked out through experience taking lots of pictures and cropping in lots of different ways until I found the ideas I liked.
Try it. There are no rules (well...), it's all down to 'art' and personal taste. Take a picture, make a copy (IMPORTANT! Don't accidentally destroy your original!!!), open it in your favourite photo editor and try cropping it in lots of different ways.
If you are not sure where to start, here are some ideas:
Cropping a picture so that the subject is on one side or in a corner can help the picture tell a story. Take this uninteresting wide shot of Anouska and Bobbit in the garden yesterday:
It's OK, but it doesn't really speak to me. However, if I crop the picture leaving Bobbit off to one side like this:
Suddenly the picture has meaning - it looks like we have caught a moment where Bobbit has spotted something just out of shot - is he going to chase after it? Now we have drama. If we crop from the other side:
Now perhaps Bobbit is looking across the garden admiring the grass. Notice also that having him down in one corner makes him look smaller in the overall scene - you can start to see how doing this sort of thing (with the right picture) can be used to emphasise how small, cute and vulnerable bunnies are for example.
So there are all sorts of interesting things you can do, it's best to just play until you start to see what sort of things work for you with what pictures.
Lastly, as you are cropping, you may notice (depending on what software you use) that the crop box is split into smaller rectangles, three across and three down.
This is a very deliberate aid. Because the first thing you are supposed to learn about when composing shots for visual media is the rule of thirds. This is quite a simple concept, you are basically aiming to get key points in the picture on the lines or in the middle of a box. For example, in close ups, try getting the eyes on the upper horizontal line and the nose or mouth on the lower horizontal line. (This is almost certainly what I did in that picture of Jemima I used in my remembrance post last month.) Or if you have an ear sticking diagonally up and off to one side, try cropping so it sits in the middle of the top corner rectangle.
Well there you go, another simple and hopefully useful tip as well as some ideas to get you started. As always, please feel free to add your comments and questions below, otherwise I'll see you back here tomorrow for another Tiny Tale!
My spare bedroom has a laminate floor. When occupied by indoor foster bunnies, for whom slippy floors can be dangerous, it is covered wall-to-wall in rubber backed mats and runners for grip, with a large washable rug on top for added foot comfort.
However well behaved and well trained the foster bunnies are, at some point they realise they are not alone in the house and will leave the odd message around the edges of the room. These are so anybun else who might wander nearby will know whose territory they are approaching. The area directly in front of the doorway will usually take the brunt of this, so underneath those mats is placed a thick layer of absorbent newspaper ready for the inevitable.
Newspaper. Just in a small area. Underneath the mats. In the corner. Out of sight. So you wouldn't know it's there.
Uh huh. Somebunny has a new project. What are the chances of working out who?
I guess I won't need to call Sherlock Holmes in to figure out this one then.
Nice sunny day today, so Whisky decided that the conservatory would be the ideal spot for some naptime bun-bathing. And since naptime is most of the time, that meant he was camped out there pretty much all day, especially after he'd worn himself out this morning with a bunch of super-charged laps of the garden.
Well since Whisky wasn't going outside any more, I thought Anouska might like to go out, so I blocked off the exit from the conservatory and sat in the garden while she played. Suddenly somebun didn't want to nap...
And then of course I spent much of the rest of the afternoon sweeping those things off the carpet. Ho hum.
