Sunday, November 24, 2013

No More Wascals

"Rosie is spending a lot of time in her house," my husband said at suppertime (which I'm supposed to point out was a delicious roasted chicken dinner that he cook). "She needs a friend."
Here we go again.
In 2008, when we built the chicken coop, we divided it in half. One half was the coop and the other was storage for food, straw and a rabbit pen. The chickens were my want (as soon as I saw these 72 acres, to be honest) but rabbits were Dwayne's because he had rabbits as a kid.
"After one winter, I had 67 rabbits," he told me. "Good thing I lived on a farm so they had lots to eat."
He sold some as pets. "I used to put a sign out at the end of the road: Rabbits For Sale." He was 12 or 13.
At the age of 52, he wanted to revisit his childhood.
 We started with two rabbits - a brown one named Nutmeg and a grey one named Rosie (named after my first car!). Then a few weeks later, we got two more rabbits - a black one named Peppa and a white one named Daisy (named after my first dog!).  They all started out as babies but they grew into big rabbits.
Nutmeg picked on the others so we gave her away.
Peppa died during a thunderstorm in the summer of 2011.
Daisy died in the fall of 2012.
Rosie is in fine fettle. My pretty little bunny. She had the outside pen all to herself this summer. We didn't flip it onto its side last winter, let the grass grow up through spring so she had a lush jungle of grass that she slowly mowed through until September. Pretty good cottage experience for a five-year-old rabbit.
But I don't want any more rabbits. They serve no purpose in our life and lead a very limited existence (although in more spacious quarters than I see most "pet" rabbits in outside). We are going to see out Rosie's life and be done with rabbits. My husband suggested we breed her once but I also don't want the responsibility of finding homes for baby bunnies. Not everyone is willing to keep a rabbit for years and years and years.
I don't think Rosie is actually lonely; I think she's annoyed. She has a lovely big space in which to roam, she's reunited with the hollow log, she has a great "condo" we created that will allow her to sit in sunshine by the window if she ever gets up the ambition to climb up the straw bales (instead of burrowing through them) BUT she is sharing that half of the coop with chickens.
Young, chatty, flappy, freaky chickens.
With young roosters just starting to crow.
With the big old rooster waking everyone up at 5 am ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WALL.
She's definitely not lonely.
And she's not getting a friend. We are a one-rabbit town.
But if anyone would like a handsome young rooster just learning to crow, watch for the sign at the end of the road.

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