At the bonding again.. this time with Gussers and Radar. Its going slow (as always) but at least this time I think it might actually happen. It’s a typical boy meets girl story – boy tries to mount girl’s face, girl runs away. Human love ain’t noth’n compared to the complexities of rabbit dating. It’s a tricky business. Today is day 6. My goal is to have a love connection by day 12.So hopefully by mid-August I’ll have a salt and pepper couple.
Squirrel on her back, kissing Huntington's face off
For the past few years I’ve had 3 rabbits: Radar, Huntington and Squirrel. I tried for months to bond Radar with the already bonded Huntington & Squirrel, but to no avail. You see, rabbits are incredibly territorial and bonding them takes a certain degree of skill, patience and persistence. And even armed with these three weapons, sometimes it still proves impossible. So, the solution was to keep them apart. This solution worked well enough since Radar is incredibly human-social and the bonded pair had one another.
However, a few months ago Huntington fell ill and died. Rabbits bond for life, so a death can be fairly devastating to the partner. I’ve read on rabbit sites that it is best to take the remaining rabbit to say goodbye to the deceased. So I packed little Squirrel up and took her to the vet. When we got there, the vet tech brought out a tiny little box and removed the lid. Inside was Huntington, lying on his side, motionless. Little Squirrely sniffed around a bit and then pawed at him. When he didn’t move, she jumped into the already cramped box and squeezed in by his side. I pretty much just crumbled.
Squirrel seemed to adjust rather quickly. During Huntington’s hospital stay, she had run around sniffing and looking for him. After the goodbye, the searching was over. Feeling overwhelmed by the second $600 vet bill in only a few months trying to save little Huntington, I decided to not replace him, reasoning that owning one less bunny would give me a better chance of staying out of the vets office again. But over the past few weeks, Squirrel has begun to show signs of loneliness such as destroying a chair, begging for attention (when she used to run from it) and even attempting to clean the eyes of a stuffed toy bunny. So, I’ve decided it might be time to find her a new partner.
I have worked with Wendy from the Utah Rabbit Rescue a number of times. She’s fantastic and will bring a pile of bunnies to your home for short “bunny dates” to determine if she has one that might be a good match. We’ve been chatting over email the past few days. Right now she has 4 babies and 1 Lionhead. The babies were on display at a PetSmart so I broke from work for a minute to take a peak. Two were black and white and the other two were red. They were all ridiculously cute.
Baby buns from the rescue
Lionheads are funny little creatures. They look a little more like a shaggy guinea pig, than a rabbit. Like Squirrel, Lionheads are a small breed and pretty high-strung and nervous. I have my doubts that they’ll be able to work through their bunny neurosis and fall in love, but wouldn’t mind at all if they did.
Lionhead
Wendy will be calling me in the near future to set up a bunny date. I’m just hoping that the babies aren’t all adopted today as Easter presents. (Insert comment here about how people should NOT buy their children bunnies for Easter because they don’t generally like to be picked up and manhandled and are entirely too moody and fragile for children) Anyhow, since I’ve made the decision to adopt another, I’m ridiculously excited and can barely stand the wait!
I will keep you posted on any love connection and hopefull I’ll have some bunny-shnugglin pictures in the near future.
Love me..
