Rabbit Rescue Pt. 2

Guest Blogger: Cory

Our rescue mission is now complete. This morning we acquired the third and final rabbit that had been carelessly abandoned in the wilds of Clemmons (where we live) to be at the mercy of the elements. Here is rabbit number three:
This one is most definitely a female (owing to the obvious lack of certain telling anatomy), and is by far the jitteriest - Calvin about gave her a heart attack when they saw each other for the first time.

Seeing how we now have a plethora of rabbits (who would have thought we'd become "those weirdos with all the rabbits"? - "Jimmy, stay away from the ol' Quinlan house - they just have too many rabbits - that ain't right!"), we needed a cage to keep them - we decided it would be best to keep them outside, sheltered of course, but they're used to it and who knows what curious bugs they picked up during their sojourn in the wilderness. We acquired a hutch, used by some good salt-of-the-earth folk from a fairly rural area just out of town to breed rabbits. The hutch was definitely big enough, but lacked a proper roof and proper cleanliness (they kept it in an old barn that housed horses, tools, and possibly various yet-to-be-discovered insects). Here's an early pic:

The top on the right was just cage mesh and the left was a kind of cardboard-on-steroids that I don't know how to describe. Anyway, I decided that Sarah's not too pregnant yet to do some good old-fashioned manual labor, so I set her to work on the roof at once:

(note Sarah's patented one-fingered hammer guiding technique: I think Bob Vila picked this up from her and claimed it as his own on the show - that fiend!)

Here she is during a brief respite between swearing at and cursing the infernal insects that plague our yard in the evenings. So, after all Sarah's hard work, here's the finished project:

We put half a floor on each side, cut out several areas of mesh that had rusted (to be covered by the floor), put the hinged roofs on (with shingles of course), and cleaned the nasty thing. The fence around the ground is to prevent stupid dogs from eating the rabbits' poop. And, seated to the right, is the stupid dog of which I spoke, nobly guarding the bunnies against predators (not realizing of course that he's the one who chases them and tries to freak them out every chance he gets).
Calvin actually loves the rabbits. He wants to play with them all the time, and even hangs out next to their cage when he's outside. The other day one of the rabbits got out of the pen while Calvin was in the yard and it was quite the spectacle: the rabbit running from Calvin, for fear of his life; Calvin chasing the rabbit, fully in play mode and having the time of his life; me chasing Calvin trying to tackle him and prevent the rabbit from going into cardiac arrest, diving to catch him and yelling repeatedly to "stay", "stop", "halt", "desist" and every other cessation word in any language I thought that mongrel might obey; and last but not least, Sarah standing in the middle of the yard watching the whole scene and laughing her @$$ off.

So, here are the three rabbits:

This is the newest one, whom we have temporarily named "Reese" because of her distinctive chocolate and peanut butter coloring and our joint fondness for that particular confection.

This guy is just "Peanut Butter" for the moment, for similar reasons to those mentioned above. He is our favorite because of his temperament and he's just so darn cute!










This is "Hershey", who was not being cooperative for our photo shoot. His name's origin is also similar to those mentioned above. Their names don't imply of course that we intend to eat them (but we don't tell them that - you've got to keep these kids in line somehow!)