My Weekly

Chris Pascoe’s Fun Tales

Chris now has huge sympathy with Ted the rabbit’s issue with doors…

-

Imentioned in last week’s column that Ted, my barely sentient pet rabbit – and so daft he’s already featuring in his own book, TheWorld’sDaftestRa­bbit. Now that’s daft! – has run into some new problems… doors. Literally. Ted has recently decided that doors don’t exist, and is refusing to accept the need to open them.

This had always been a slight problem of Ted’s. He’s walked into doors before, but it’s now become a daily thing. Ted seems to reason that if the doorway to his hutch was once open, it’s always open, despite the evidence of a latched wooden door. He’ll therefore walk towards it, getting closer and closer with no sign of slowing down as he reaches it, and then – bang! – walk headfirst into it and bounce backwards onto his bobtail.

He’ll then sit staring at the door in total disbelief for a good ten minutes. His live-in-partner-girl-rabbit Billie generally looks up briefly, twitches her nose in contempt, and then goes back to munching hay.

It’s not only doors Ted doesn’t believe in – it’s absolutely anything that opens and shuts. Ted believes that anything that was once open will always be open and that’s final.

This is particular­ly a problem with his timerfeede­r. In an effort to regulate Ted’s eating while we’re out (i.e. prevent him from eating a day’s worth of food in 20 seconds flat and then fainting) we purchased a clever little pet-feeder with multiple covered food trays that open at set times of the day. You’ve already guessed the problem here, haven’t you? While Billie’s already worked out how it all works, Ted of course has no idea whatsoever how it works and simply sits stubbing his snout on the container lids like one of those perpetual motion novelty toy birds repeatedly dipping its head into a bowl of water.

Another open-able rabbit door, the wire grill door of their run, is also seeing quite a lot of Ted lately. As with the hutch door, Ted attempts to pass through it in spirit-like fashion, only to be thwarted at every attempt. Only his nose, an eye and occasional­ly a lop-ear will get through, the rest of him remaining bunched up behind the wire.

After writing the above, I have to admit I’ve just proved once and for all that Ted may be dumb – but no dumber than his owner.

We’ve recently had new doors fitted. The difference between these doors and our old ones is that you need to turn the handle to open them, instead of just pushing the door. And so it was that I got up from my desk, holding my cup of coffee, and walked briskly to the office door, gave it a firm shove… and walked straight into it. I then returned to my desk covered in coffee and added this paragraph. And right there’s a little insight to exactly how I work.

We share a lot of traits, Ted and I. “Barely sentient” being one of them…

Ted, the daftrabbit, has always had a big problem with doors

Out now! Our first ever Fun Tales Collection! The World’sDaftest Rabbit&Other Stories is available exclusivel­y from WWW.DCTHOMSONS­HOP. CO.UKFOR just £7.99.

 ??  ??
 ??  ??
 ??  ??
 ??  ??
 ??  ??
 ??  ??
 ??  ??
 ??  ??

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from United Kingdom