Charlie has been asking for a bunny since practically birth. So now that she’s a big ‘grown up’ 6, she told us she is ready. and basically gave us an ultimatum: bunny or horse.
(she is admittedly the boss around here)
So we decided to design her a bunny habitat that wouldn’t look like – well, a sad metal cage that we would feel sad to leave the little fur ball in.
bunnies need light! a play yard! safety from flesh-eating foxes and coyotes & stray dogs.
so we sketched a bunch of little cottages that looked like camp-y, mini treehouses, miniature modern structures- even a little A-frame sorta building. She picked the one that looked like ‘Lincoln Logs’ as she described it.
We can stand up inside it and it can be converted to a playhouse, when someday (probably sooner than later) she gets sick of cleaning up bunny poop.
THE DEETS:
- stained cedar shake shingles
- copper ridge cap
- iron strap hinges & latches
- decking is salvaged Boy Scout dock
- Latvian 8-pointed star carved into doors “Auseklis” The celestial body of venus.
- main body are landscaping timbers
- escape hatch in the back (big enough for a bunny to climb into the ‘grazing yard’) but too small for a fox to join her.
- ‘fox knocker’ (door knocker shaped like a menacing fox head) too morbid?
so now that the bunny house is here, we now have to outfit it with an enormous list of stuff the breeder told us we need.
we had zero idea there was no much stuff: special watering devices. feeding devices. grooming station. metal security cage. special food, bedding, and and and…
THE GUEST OF HONOR HAS SHARP CLAWS.
…So warns the breeder. our neighbor at camp is “Judy the bunny breeder”. She is basically the mother of all rabbits. her whole back yard is a ginormous maze of rabbit houses. a maze so complex it rivals the hedgerow maze in ‘the shining’
we paid judy a visit, met the bunny parent options (picking from a bazillion was hard). judy says she raises to kinds: ‘blue ribbons’ and ‘blue plate specials’. We picked a ‘blue plate’ mom- one that wasn’t a winner, but destined for the stew pot.
Judy told us she was already preggers & come back in a month. it was a looong month for an impatient 5 year old to wait. but as rabbits do, she (finally) had the baby bunnies!) Charliegirl picked a furball from the pile- and we got the call we could bring her home today.
and has decided to call her either “Oreo” or “Lila”- and insists on decorating the interior with more bunnies.
