Our friend Casey had a little bit of angora left over from a knitting project, so she made us a new bunny out of it.  Derby has been getting to know his new little friend and, as you can see, seem to be getting along rather well.  He won’t share his frozen water bottle with the little blue guy yet — but I think that’s okay.  😉

[tags]rabbits, house rabbits, bunnies, fun[/tags]

We’ve been trying to teach Derby to fetch a tennis ball. So far, he runs to ball, nudges it a bit, then runs back to us for a bit of banana chip.

Now, given his recent foray into the yard…
I realized that he has the potential to be the first ball bun at Wimbledon! With that new retractable roof, he would have protection from hawks.  He could keep the lawn trimmed and fertilized, all while being cute and/or disapproving. (Come to think of it, he’d make a great umpire, too)

We thought that we were all set for today’s switch to Digital television. We bought a new digital flat-screen TV last winter, but I figured out just this week that we might not have the right antenna.

The DTV signals broadcast at higher frequencies; almost all of them are in the Ultra High Frequency (UHF) range. The traditional Rabbit Ear aerials pick up the Very High Frequency signals (VHF), which means that they will be useless in our area. So I ordered a brand spanking new DTV, UHF “Donut” antenna; when it arrives we’ll hook it up and stick the Rabbit Ears in the closet for now.

Until then, we will just have to manage (such privation!).

Thanks to Government regulators, we can not just throw the old antenna away.  A little-known requirement buried in the Telecommunications Act of 1996 (S.652) mandates that all House Rabbit owners possess at least one set of “functional dipole Very High Frequency (VHF) antennae” (Rabbit Ears) at all times; even if they are not hooked up and even if the rabbit owner(s) has/have a subscription for cable television.

The rule is sometimes known as “The Thumper Amendment”.

No provision was made for enforcement, though,  nor did the regulation make any mention of potential sanctions for violators.

Still, just to be safe, and for the sake of our bunny, we’ll keep the old one for now.

We lost Ms. Petunia.  She had been doing well, even with the head tilt.  She was active and eating.  The picture below was taken just yesterday.   She was fine all day and then late last night she took a sudden turn.  She let me hold her on my lap for quite a while, and I’ve learned that’s how my bunnies say goodbye.  I left her in the litterbox around midnight, with something clearly wrong, and we found her this morning.

Goodbye sweet Ms. Petunia.  Thanks for sharing some of your time with us.

мебели

[tags]house rabbits, bunny, bunnies, farewell[/tags]

Our Petunia is fighting a terrible bunny condition called head tilt. She looks so cute in this picture, taken the first couple of days. Her condition has stabilized and we have high hopes she’ll pull through and recover entirely. I’m looking forward to her head being upright where it belongs again.

But the really amazing thing, has been the support of the Bunny Lovers Unite (BLU) community on Flickr. These amazing people have been providing support and advice beyond imagination. They even prod us for updates if we don’t provide them every couple of days!

We’ve been posting the updates on Petunia’s recovery on BLU, and you can follow them there too.

[tags]head tilt, petunia, house rabbit, rabbits[/tags]