The House Bunny

     Last week while I was going through some old photos I found at my in-laws' house (see post from 2/11/16)  I came across this picture, taken in the summer of 2001:

      The critter in my daughter Maria's arms was Daisy, our house bunny.

     Daisy was a beautiful, sweet  angora rabbit given to us by a friend who bred angoras.

     Our friend gave us Daisy to help us get over the recent loss of Buddy, who'd been our outdoor bunny (see tomorrow's post).

      As Buddy had ultimately not survived well in the outdoors, we decided that Daisy would be a house bunny, though it took us some time and learning - sometimes the hard way - what being an unofficial member of  the House Rabbit Society  entailed.

 By the way, there really is such an outfit, and though we didn't actually join the House Rabbit Society,  we did at that time acquire  a copy of their handbook, which we often referred to.

      Daisy loved to eat carrots, dandelions, rabbit food and daisies,

...along with, as we learned within days, to our sorrow,

...books, carpeting,

...artificial plants,

...luggage,

...woodwork,

...my artwork,

...electrical cords, computer wires,

...and she also loved to annoy The Cat. (That was what we called our white cat.  The Cat.  Or the Little Cat, as our other cat, The Big Cat, had died some years ago.  Our current cat is The Black Cat, though we do also call this one  by her given name, Lucy.

Here's Lucy, laying on her catnip pillow).

     I recall the day shortly after Daisy's arrival when we were unable to figure out why our computer crashed until someone discovered the chewed-up cord.  That was the day when my sister-in-law Mary Jane said to me, "if I were you I'd do something about that rabbit."
    So we did.

     We got a big dog cage for Daisy to stay in during the times we couldn't keep a close eye on her comings, goings, and chewings.

    And so for the next two years we had a bunny living in a big cage in the middle of our family room.
    Daisy seemed happy enough in her cage, though, and busy enough.  All day long I'd hear the sounds of our industrious little bunny nibbling on her rabbit chow, nibbling on an old book  placed in her cage,  playing with her newspaper or a magazine, drinking from her bottle - it seemed she was almost always busy doing something,

..though she also did seem to enjoy sitting in her litter box for long stretches, as, we learned from the House Rabbit society, rabbits like to do.

     It was my directive that the the bunny's cage had to be cleaned every day, and by someone other than me.  Thus Tommy and Theresa (and Maria and Claire during those times when they were home from college) took the daily job of cleaning Daisy's cage, during which time she was free to roam - we learned that spraying a substance called Bitter Apple on anything we didn't want chewed was quite effective to that end.  The job of cleaning the rabbit cage was divided into two segments, known as "uppers" and "downers".  "Downers"  referred to the task of taking the bottom of the cage downstairs to the basement to wash it off in the big  laundry sink and then cleaning and re-filling the litter box.  "Uppers" was performed after downers, and consisted of covering the bottom of the clean cage with newspaper and re-filling the water bottle and the food dish.  The kids generally worked out among themselves each day who'd take uppers and who'd take downers. 

    Daisy  even received the occasional bath and blow-dry, along with a daily brushing.

     Though Daisy received lots of love and attention and the best care we knew how to give,

    ...she lived for only 2 years.   But I felt like she had a happy life for a bunny and when she died, though I felt quite sad, I felt more at peace than when Buddy, our first rabbit, died. 
To Be Continued....