Chris Pascoe’s Fun Tales
Ted the rabbit fails to fully appreciate his state-of-the-art new penthouse hutch…
It’s been a big week for the rabbit population of our household – all two of them; the demure and sophisticated, but ever so slightly psychotically violent female Billie, and her barely sentient partner Ted, the world’s dumbest rabbit.
On Saturday we updated their tired old indoor living quarters to a brand new shiny and trendy open-plan hutch. It was to be Bill and Ted’s Great Big Open-Plan Living Adventure.
As well as being spacious, it contains all mod cons, with everything the modern bunny-about-town could ever need, including built in indestructible food bowls, hanging water bottles, a cave-like bedroom and a luxury toilet.
Ted, of course, failed to appreciate any of this and within 10 seconds of moving in, lurched over sideways and lay snoring with half his ear in the food bowl. Now I don’t know how you feel about body parts in your dinner, but being someone who needs to stop eating if I find even a hair in my food, I’d probably be pretty upset to find an ear in it – especially with a sleeping rabbit attached.
Billie and I are often on the same wavelength (being on the same wavelength as a rabbit is one of the things that’s made my life such a mess) and it would appear that she decided to take quick and decisive action on the matter because, by Tuesday, Ted had to be taken to the vet suffering with, as described by our long-suffering vet, “a huge abscess behind the left ear, probably caused by a bite from another rabbit”. So, either the aforementioned decisive action or she must have thought he was a carrot.
Ted needed immediate surgery. We were told this could be very stressful for a rabbit and he’d probably go off his food for a few days and need hand-feeding. When we returned to collect him he was idly munching hay and watching the world go by. The vet couldn’t believe how totally laid-back he’d been, calling him a “very strongminded rabbit indeed”.
Strong-minded? I have a feeling all this owed less to bravery than to a complete failure to understand the situation, but I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt… and a carrot.
On returning to his brand new penthouse hutch, Ted obviously decided he needed a bit of bed-rest and made full use of its hidey-hole bedroom for the first time – though not by crawling into it, but rather lying draped over it like a floppy-eared rug. Only Ted could be given a man-cave and sit on top of it.
After a little while of his dozing, I happened to be passing the hutch and had the misfortune to witness Ted rolling over blissfully in his sleep… continuing to roll, and dropping over the edge of his cave like a stone, straight onto Billie as she sat grazing at the food bowl below, thus pushing her face down into a pile of pellets and copiously covering her in dust and food crumbs.
We’re looking out for signs of a new abscess on Ted. Shouldn’t be long now…