Introducing Pippy

Zac's Prayer

"Oh Bunny-on-High
Who did create all bunnies in his/her image
I offer this prayer to you
In hope of the life I deserve.

Please bring me a hutch
Tall enough for me to stand on my tippy toes
And deep enough to stretch out in
That is warm in winter
And cool in summer
With a run attached for me to play in
With a roof to protect me
A run so long I can sprint full speed
And so high I can leap in the air
With lots of interesting things to do
And places to hide.

But most of all
I would like a family who will love me
Through the good times and bad
Who notice when I feel poorly
And will do anything for me.
Ame....no wait.
And carrots. Lots and lots of carrots.
Amen."

Mornin' Yawnin'

Bunnies are creatures of habit. Thus, you would think, the task of capturing a picture of Jemima's daily post-breakfast mega-stretch-and-yawn should be a trivial task. Not so. For, like electrons, bunnies are slaves to something called the Observer Effect. Simply put, this means that the simple act of observing a bunny is enough to alter it's course or behaviour. To see where a bunny is going you must look, but to look is to cause the bunny to go somewhere else. You get the idea.

In this case, point a camera at something that bunnies do every day and today it won't happen.

So, after many years of trying, I finally get the camera in the right place at the right time and out of sight, only to mess up the focusing and timing. D'oh. Next time...

Stair Shift

"Oh, by the way - this whole house is now mine. End of discussion."

We had a routine in my house. I would go downstairs to make breakfast and when I returned Whisky would be waiting for me. He would then race round and round my feet from the top of the stairs until the food was on the floor of his room. But no more. On Monday I was half way through washing, peeling and finely chopping his breakfast fare when I turned around to see him watching me with great interest from the hallway.

Yes, this week, after a mere 15 months living in my house, Whisky has finally realised that he really can climb down the stairs.

I was really proud of him, right up to the point where the implications of a having fully free-roaming bunny in the house hit me. I cant say exactly when that was, but it was probably not too long after I looked up from my breakfast to see Whisky stood upright on his back legs in the middle of the lounge. It turns out to be surprising difficult to eat a bowl of cereal with a bunny staring at you the whole time.

Parsley Mouth

Bunny + parsley = goofy-face. Fact.

Goofy-Faced Rocket

Goofy-Faced Giggles

Goofy-Faced Cora

Goofy-Faced Flin and Goofy-Faced Goldilocks

Don't Judge Me, I'm Crepuscular

The Rescue is open to visitors, by appointment, on Saturday afternoons. In the hot summer months particularly this can pose a unique challenge.

We want our visitors to meet our residents and get to know their personalities - you don't want to choose new additions to your family based solely on looks. (Unless you are the strange visitor from yesterday who I can only presume was just looking for rabbits that went well with her curtains.) You want to see if they react well to your children, that you can cope with their level of energy and inquisitiveness, that they are the right rabbits for the accommodation you have planned for them etc etc. Where this all falls apart is that mid-afternoon, for the majority of bunnies, means one thing - naptime.

"And in this warren we have Hettie and Errol, who as you can see love to run around causing chaos and...oh."

"Zzzzzzzzzzzzz"

Shutter Bun

After 18 months of owning my current camera, I thought it was about time I tried to figure out how to use it. So this week in the garden I've been playing around with adjusting, amount other things, the shutter speed. By putting the camera down on a stable surface and setting a slow shutter speed, it is possible to achieve a sense of motion as moving objects become blurred while stationary ones are in focus.

At some point I might one day become good enough to consider my photographs 'art' and give them fancy titles. For example, this one might be called "Jemima is a fat bunny because..."