the penguin returns...

... new, improved, with fewer rabbit behinds.

Since last posting we've had some big changes in the penguin household. We have joyfully added a small penguin (my daughter, 16 months old) and sadly said goodbye to Honey Bunny who passed away shortly before Christmas from a suspected red back spider bite. Koko Black powers on, and enjoys playing with the neighbour's cat from the safety of her enclosure. The cat has decided that she would prefer to live at our place and seems unimpressed by verbal arguments concerning the allergies of my husband.

The ups and downs of life with a small penguin mean that my blog posts are unlikely to be a daily occurence, but hopefully I'll get them out regularly enough to keep a few people entertained and/or encouraged.

Stay tuned for a series called "when church sucks" - it won't be quite as bleak as the title suggests.

Sunday bunny - a young Honey Bunny

I'm feeling paranoid about taking the camera out of my hospital bag now, as I don't want to forget it or the memory card when we go in. With baby now a week overdue, we will be needing it soon.

There are some impressive excavations in the backyard, however I won't be photographing them. Andrew has reached down the hole with a garden stake, and it is now nearly 2 metres long, and wide enough to turn around in. It is angled downwards, so the design aim seems to be an extension of bunny living quarters, rather than escape.

Anyway, this is Sunday bunny, and without further ado, here is a picture of Honey Bunny from her youth.


Posts will almost certainly become more irregular from here on in, at least for a while.

Sunday bunny - angled Honey Bunny

Sunday bunny - the excavations continue

The hole is deeper...


one can only just make out a tail when they're all the way down...
(right hand side of pic in the middle)


This is Koko Black exiting bottom first, obviously there isn't enough space at the end of the burrow to turn around yet...

Sunday bunny - tunnelling

There's nothing like rain softened earth and mild temperatures to bring out the tunnellers...

Sunday bunny - flat out Honey Bunny

Captured by Andrew - Honey Bunny lies flat out in a self dug trench. Like many mature girl rabbits, she has a ruff of loose skin around her neck, which adds to her somewhat peculiar look.

Sunday bunnies

Sunday bunny

A close up of Koko Black

Sunday bunny: from cute overload

Click here for the original post "OK, so I might have a problem"

I have resolved to ration myself to one rabbit related post per week from here on in...

a happy moment of provision

The RSPCA has sold out. We had been purchasing RSPCA endorsed food for our rabbits which we discovered is "enriched with molasses". Feeding it to them meant that we were giving them a sugar hit twice a day. Figuring that this could be the cause of their cranky behaviour and expanding waistlines, we've weaned them off it. This has meant increasing their vegie intake, which can add unnecessary $ to the grocery bill.

So I decided to weed out the clover from our vegie patch and plant some rabbit friendly vegetables. However, it's hard to get seedlings established in our garden. They are either dug up by the neighbourhood cats who like to use the patch for a litter box, or snacked on by the local bird population who seem to prefer the tenderness of new seedlings over older established plants.

It occurred to me that what I needed was something that would let light and rain through, but keep the wildlife out. Until a few hours ago I thought that I would solve the problem by going to Bunnings tomorrow and making a purchase. The "cheap" solution to our rabbits' dietary requirements was getting more and more expensive. However, as I was driving home, I noticed that people from a house round the corner from us were putting out plastic bakery trays for the hard rubbish collection. These trays have holes wide enough to let light and sun through, but small enough to keep the birds out.

Having checked that they were definitely up for grabs - there was plenty of other hard rubbish out on the street, but I'd hate to make a mistake - I picked them up, took them home and positioned them over the seedlings.

It made me very happy.

Don't get me wrong though, I'm not pretending for an instant that the dietary needs of our rabbits are of earth shattering importance. They are just bunnies. However it did remind me of God's generous provision for us in so many ways every day - even in little things.

fennel

It seems that fennel is an acquired taste - it was missing this morning when I checked the rabbits' hutch. I'm amazed at what they can manage to chew down. They also enjoy "neat" coriander, thyme and twigs from lemon trees. Tangy!

wet n wild

Our rabbits have access to a sheltered hutch, but they usually prefer the outdoors when it's raining. The hole in the bottom right hand of the picture was dug by them.

peace reigns in the bunny hutch

Koko Black is grooming Honey Bunny. There was no rabbit argy-bargy today.

Mexican standoff in the bunny hutch

Food has always been a bit of a divider for our bunnies.

Every meal time they hear one of us approach with their pellets and are stirred into a frenzy of anxiety. Will there be a sufficient supply for both? For a while they simply growled at one other and acted a bit agro until the pellets arrived, at which point both would go heads down, tails up into their bowl.

Now, however, bunny paranoia has reached a new level. The attitude runs something like this:

If there are to be enough bunny pellets for me, then I need to keep you away from them, so that I can have them for myself. However, keeping you away from the pellets involves vigilance on my part, therefore I cannot enjoy the pellets either.

I have never claimed that they are intelligent creatures!

Until a human intervenes, or the hunger pangs get too strong, no bunny gets to eat. The pellets disappear far more slowly over the day, rather than vanishing within an hour or two of first being put out as they used to.

(Lest anyone mistake us for cruel people who underfeed our bunnies, it is worth pointing out that they always have plenty of hay, and usually also grass and vegies supplementary to their pellets. Both bunnies are amply proportioned.)

I was tempted to call this post "bunnies are just like people - 3rd installment", but I restrained myself. While I did take a small portion of potato from my husband's plate yesterday, I didn't growl at him as I did so, nor did we both go hungry while protecting our meals from one another!

However, there is a fundamental lack of bunny trust in us as their carers and protectors which I find disheartening. In many ways this is very similar to how we treat God - He gives us everything and promises to provide all we need, yet most of the time we act as if there isn't enough to go around, and assume that we ought to get whatever we need on our own terms, even if it means hurting someone else. (Rom 1:18-32)

Even just this afternoon I have been reminded of my need to keep on trusting God in prayer for everything I need. May I act toward Him and my fellow humans far better than the bunnies treat their owners and one another!

character over looks?

The votes are in, and it seems that Pilgrim Penguin readers are more impressed by bunny character (Koko Black) than bunny good looks (Honey Bunny). However, I am aware of some vote fixing that went on, with one reader voting from three separate computers!! So maybe take the result with a grain of salt.

One of my favourite time wasting sites on the internet is Disapproving Rabbits - here's a little video offering that appeared today.

evidence from a crime scene

Observe what I found in the bunnies' hutch this morning. Particularly take note of the colour of the fur. Perhaps Koko Black gives as good, or even better, than she gets...



... and to think that they look so cute, fluffy and innocent!

which bunny is superior?

I'm still feeling the after effects of being sick and don't have much brain today, so it feels appropriate to blog about bunnies again.

A few members of our church youth group are divided over the question of which pet bunny of ours is the superior bunny. This is probably the best kind of division one could have at church : )

So here are some descriptions of our bunnies, along with a photo. Please cast your vote as to which bunny is the superior bunny...

Honey Bunny

• is extremely cute - has a strong resemblance to Peter Rabbit
• is a go getting bunny - has found multiple ways to escape her hutch and is always first to try a new adventure
  
• doesn't mind being patted on ground level but has an aversion to being picked up - we are told this is typical for bunnies - she will bite if she deems it necessary
• is bigger than her sister and sometimes uses this to her advantage - she can be a bit of a thug

Koko Black

• is cute, but not as cute as Honey Bunny
• is a more retiring bunny, doesn't get herself into trouble
  
• isn't a big fan of getting patted on ground level, but tolerates being picked up and the odd cuddle
• is a follower, will try things after her sister has tested the waters a few times

bunnies are just like people: 2nd installment

Today the rabbits escaped from their hutch, again.

The larger of our two bunnies, Honey Bunny, is a kind of bunny Houdini. Today's escape involved a combination of tunneling under the hutch and moving bricks that had been placed to prevent escape! (She looks cute, doesn't she?!)



Getting them back in the hutch before they've had a run around seems unkind to me, so we blocked off the exits to our yard and gave them a lengthy playtime before I returned them to their hutch late this afternoon. However this meant that I had to commit to keeping an eye on them all day.

What the bunnies fail to understand is that we keep them confined for good reasons. There are numerous threats to their safety outside the hutch: cars on the road, mouse poison under the house, a large neighbourhood cat population and a vicious sounding dog that lives next door.

So what tenuous link will I draw between rabbits and us? Well I reckon that the way we relate to God is sometimes a bit like how the bunnies relate to me. The bunnies assume that they know what's best for them, but their knowledge is sadly limited. If they had been allowed to do as they pleased today there is every chance that one or both of them would have met a sticky end.

Sometimes it's hard to understand why God gives Christians particular guidelines for living in the Bible. Some of the commands seem really old-fashioned, and out of step with standards that most other people have.

While I can come up with reasons for most of God's commands to us, there are some where I don't know anything approaching the full story. These commands call for trust and obedience just as much as the ones I can explain do.

The analogy does break down of course, because God is much greater in his love for us than I am in my love for my rabbits (though I most certainly do care for them). Also the difference between God's knowledge and my knowledge is much greater than the difference between my knowledge and that of a fluffy bunny.

I would like it if our bunnies displayed a little more trust and obedience toward us as their owners, after all, we are not nasty killjoys!

How much more should Christians trust and obey our loving, all-knowing Father.

And I thought I was wasting time writing a blog...

Enjoy!




You can see more of this here.

bunnies are just like people: 1st installment

Now I have already had at least two scientifically minded people pull me up on my idea that bunnies are just like people, however I hope to prove this point over a number of entries on this blog.

Observe the two bunnies below...


They are sisters who have known one another since the womb. In this picture it looks like they are both they are very close and snuggly with one another. They could even be about to give one another a sisterly bunny kiss.

However, looks can be deceiving. What the picture fails to reveal - I blame my unsteady hand, the fact that it's a dodgy phone camera and the not entirely co-operative attitude of the subjects - is that one bunny is eating food from the mouth of the other bunny. It would appear that there is a bunny maxim that goes something like this...

The food in the other bunny's mouth is far more delicious than the food in the dish.

As you will gather from the picture, these are not starving bunnies.

What the bunnies are doing is really just a slightly less sophisticated version our own behaviour. We can think that the stuff that other people have, or the lives that they lead, are way more exciting than what we've got. It can even get to the point where we can't see the good things that we have, because we're so fixated on other people's lives and possessions.

Well I don't hold great hopes for modifying the behaviour of our bunnies, but I do hope that I can learn to grow in contentment (Phil 4:11-12; 1 Tim 6:6). There is plenty of room for me to grow in that department. To that end I have agreed to write a print article about it in the next month or two so that I can think harder about what it means to be content, and hopefully encourage myself and others in that path. I'll keep you all posted about with any major breakthroughs.

I also plan to continue anthropomorphising the bunnies.