Leave My Parking Space Alone!

My local chain grocery store reserves 3 parking spaces near the front door for adults with children. It's fabulous when I take my son with me because it's right near where the shopping carts are, and I don't have to cross the parking lot to get to the door. Every now and then, I drive up and all those spaces are occupied. No big deal, really. Glad the store is doing well because I want to keep shopping there. However, sometimes I glance into those cars in those easy-access, convenient parking spaces reserved for adults with children, and there's not a car seat to be seen. And that just makes me want to key those cars that are parked there.

Now, before anyone freaks out, I have never vandilized a car for a reason as ridiculous as being in a parking space I wanted. In fact, I've never vandilized a car, period. I understand that the store reserves those parking spaces as a courtesy, much like some businesses reserve spaces for pregnant women so they don't have to walk so far. It's not a law, and people without children can't be ticketed for parking in those spots like they could in handicapped parking. In fact, there's reason the store has to reserve those spots at all. But they choose to as a customer service option. And I greatly appreciate it.

So the next time you see parking for adults with children, don't roll your eyes because parents somehow feel entitled to better parking. We don't. And we're not. But when someone takes the time to do something to make our lives a little bit easier, it goes a long way. And when someone without kids takes those parking spaces, it just shows how selfish and disrespectful they are of both the parents who could park there but now can't, and the store where they're shopping that's trying to have good customer service but can't because certain patrons choose to take advantage.

People with children aren't special or entitled. But we really appreciate the little things.

On the Utility of Clausterphobia

People who know me will not find the following statement surprising: I love bunnies. I've owned bunnies for almost 10 years now. The first one was something of an accident. My husband was deployed, and I felt like I needed something to focus my energy on. I decided a pet was just the thing, and I had never had a rabbit before. This was before I worked in the vertinary field or was familiar with rescues and I figured the only way to get one was the pet shop. So I picked up my first bunny at a pet shop. At the same time, I purchased "Rabbits for Dummies" by Audrey Pavia. It's an excellent book that I highly recommend to anyone owning or looking to work with rabbits any way. This was how I learned about the idea of house rabbits: bunnies who live in the house with the people as opposed to the yard where they get forgotten or eaten by coyotes.

Turns out, bunnies have fun little personalities and are loads of fun to keep in the house. They like to sit on your lap and snuggle. They like to sleep on the carpet. They like to hang out with people and play with toys. Some of them will even retrieve. Up until very recently, our bunnies have had their own room in our house.

About a year ago, my husband proposed the idea of moving our bunnies outside so that we could have a guest room. As an advocate for house rabbits, I was conflicted. I wasn't opposed to the idea of rabbits living outside. In fact, I was certain there was a way it could be done. However, having them outside brings up many issues that need to be addressed in the name of health and safety: predators, insects, burrowing, heat, cold, rain, attention, stress. All things that need to be resolved if bunnies are going to live and thrive outside. I told him I would be willing to do it if we could find ways to deal with all these problems.

So we began a quest to find a safe way to have our bunnies outside and still part of the family. We found a custom-built chicken coop that we had to have important from England that looked like it would do as a starting point. It's about 4 feet by 2 feet and has a nesting box where we put hay and the litter box. It has a built-in play yard (not very big, but they frequently have free run of the whole back yard when the weather is nice, more on that in a minute), and a roof. We put it in the shade of a tree in a corner of our yard that gets almost no direct sunlight. My husband dug down about 3 feet all the way around the perimeter and burried rocks and cement edges to curb burrowing. Once every few months, we spray the whole thing down with citronella oil to keep the bugs away (we have a serious fly problem where we live, and there are numerous nasty diseases that bunnies can get from mosquitoes). The floor on the main level is dirt which we cover with bark mulch as needed, and the upper level has a wood-and-metal floor that we cover with a towel on one side, and a tray that forms the litter box on the other. Every few days the upper level gets stripped and cleaned with vinegar and high-power water spray. When the days are hot, the bunnies get ice packs. But these are no ordinary ice packs. They are 2-liter bottles of frozen water we keep on hand in our chest freezer. The bunnies get one bottle during the day, and if the evening is still warm enough to need one, we swap the daytime bottle for a fresh, frozen one. And voila! Cool in the summer, warm in the winter, dry in the rain, protected from predators and insects, bunny proof. If the weather's nice (not too hot, not too cold), we let them have free run of the back yard to eat as much grass as they want. This means we have to make sure and keep the grass free of mushrooms, and make sure all the plants we plant are non-toxic.

Sound like a lot of work? It is! But we've been surprised how happy our bunnies are with this arrangement. We still see them every day (we have to feed them, don't we?) which gives us a chance to check them over and make sure they're healthy. They eat a good diet thanks to the weather-proof containers we found for hay and pellets. Sure we have to clean more often than we did when they were inside, but that's part of keeping them healthy. And yes, we have to make more of an effort to spend time with them, but what family member isn't worth a little bit of extra effort? There's also a lot of maintenance involved in their new custom home: hinges get loose, wood has to be water-sealed, screening has to be replaced, mulch, mulch, and more mulch. And we have to keep an eye out for crafty bunnies who find ways to dig under the barrier we placed. So every once in a while we head to the garden store for more river rocks. It's all worth it to keep our bunnies safe and happy.

I used to believe the only acceptable place to keep a rabbit was in the house, and there are many rescues and other organizations that feel the same way. My own experience has led me to change my view to include outdoor habitats as long as they're done well. There's a right way and a wrong way to keep rabbits outside, and doing it right is complicated and labor-intesive, but it CAN be done.

So to the rabbit rescue who outright refused to adopt to us because we keep our rabbits outside: that's okay. We found a bunny buddy at the animal shelter, and we'll still buy our hay and pellets from you. And to the volunteer who gave us a condescending lecture about myxomatosis: I'm an RVT. I have 8 years of experience with small and exotic animals and I worked for 2 and 1/2 years under one of the best rabbit doctors out there. Your policy is, quite frankly, insulting to me. To suggest that I can't possibly take acceptable care of my bunnies while they live outside is belittling.

All of this is to say that we recently acquired another bunny. Our older bunny died, leaving his girlfriend behind. Now that we have them outside, it was very important to us to find a new boyfriend for her because we could tell she was clearly lonely. So a few days ago, we headed to the animal shelter and met a black and white mini rex the shelter had named Mickey. He's very sweet, but very shy and nervous. In talking to the shelter staff, we found out he was surrendered by his previous owners just the day before. So we think his nervousness may very well be temporary. He's had a lot of upheaval in his little life in the past few days: his family moved, he got sent to the shelter, and then brought back to our house where his new girlfriend promtly tried to kill him.

A special note about bunny fights: they fight dirty. There are no ground rules, and no gentlemen's agreements. They bite, pull hair, and go for the genitals. They growl, chase, circle, and kick. And the fur flies! And it all happens so fast that breaking it up can be difficult.

We brought our female bunny with us to the shelter so she could meet prospective boyfriends. We figured we'd go with the one she didn't try to kill on sight. She's a little pushy and she likes to get her way. The reason her last relationship worked so well was because her boyfriend let her push him around and stayed out of her way. They met up, and sat next to each other in my husband's lap. Looked like we had a winner.

There are many approaches to teaching a pair of bunnies to get along. We have had the best luck with what I call the Car Ride Method. Throw both bunnies in a carrier and take them on a long car ride. The car ride is stressful and bunnies' natural tendency is to look for another bunny to snuggle up to when they get nervous. So you create an environment where the other bunny's presence is soothing and positive. Then when you get home, they view each other as good as opposed to threatening. After we take them on a car ride, we set them up in a pen (in the house for this part). We put them both in the litter box together, side by side, and sit with them for an hour or two, making sure they stay next to each other and no one bites anyone else. Eventually one or the other will being grooming the other bunny. This is a very good sign. Bunnies, much like primates, use grooming as a social activity. They will groom each other as they lie next to each other and rest during the day. Once we've gone a reasonable amount of time without any fur flying, we start making the pen smaller and smaller, forcing the bunnies to be in closer proximity to each other. When the pen is as small as it will go, we leave the bunnies together in that tight space for a few days, monitoring them closely. They can't get away from each other, and being is such a small space forces them to buddy up again, just like in the car.

Then we move them into their permanent environment (in this case, their custom house in the yard), and watch them. It's very important to wait on this step until you're fairly confident the bunnies have worked out who's the dominant one, and the submissive one has figured out what to do: run away, bite back, groom, ignore, whatever works for them. Because we can't monitor them as closely when they're outside as we can when they're inside, we wanted to be sure we wouldn't get up one morning to find an injured bunny in the cage.

And the good news is, it worked! They're still sorting themselves out a little bit, but they're both eating and drinking and seem to be tolerating each other very well. Hooray for orchestrated stress!