If he wants to. And right now I'm still figuring out what bunnies like to do.
In the barn we have three separate chicken pens. Harry, the rooster, and his little friend live in one pen and the rest of the chickens lived in the other two. When Ollie came, we shooed the hens into one pen and cleaned out the middle section for a bunny house. We got Ollie settled, then Daryl and I went inside to eat supper. When we came back outside, Ollie had gotten into Harry's home. We found a small space in the fence that didn't look big enough to squeeze through, but apparently it was just big enough. Ollie seemed content enough, but Harry was quite concerned about this new hopper.
I had one of those "fiddle-dee-dee, I'll take care of it in the morning" moments and left Ollie to spend the night with Harry. The next morning when I went to check on everyone, Ollie had left Harry and crossed into the other chicken's pen! Ollie didn't seem as content to be in the pen with 20 chickens and was looking around to find a way out.
I coaxed Ollie back into his home and attached chicken wire along the bottom of the entire pen. I had solved the problem of keeping him in his pen, but now I needed to learn about rabbits.
This is what I have learned and figured out so far:
1. A rabbit can be frightened to death. I would hate for that to happen, but from what I have seen so far, he has come much closer to frightening the chickens to death than the other way around.
2. Rabbits are smarter than chickens. I can just tell. Being smarter than a chicken is not a steep hill to climb, though.
3. Rabbits can get bored and when they are bored, they try to get out of their home. We certainly can't have a bored rabbit in the family so I looked online to see what the rabbit equivalent of video games would be. After my quick search I packed up a box and took some toys out to Ollie: an empty coffee can, the plastic lid from the top of a Tide container, a telephone book, some clover from the field, an upside down garbage can to sit on with a gangplank to walk up, a piece of pipe to crawl in, and I left the box. His pen looks like a messy day care playroom. Rabbit heaven, I'm sure.
4. Rabbits have sharp claws and they will use them if you try to give them a hug. Ollie doesn't need a hug. And my hands are healing nicely.
I think we will be good friends. As soon as I figure out this hugging thing.
you had me and the kids laughing out loud at all of this! can't wait to come see his messy daycare room! I went outside today and started walking to his pen out of habit - kind of sad when I saw it empty, but it sounds like he's much happier over there! as for the hugs ... sometimes we'd sit on the ground and he'd hop into our laps for a bit ... so maybe it just has to be on his terms? :)
ReplyDelete