A bit unexpected our new bunny had baby bunnies last week! OK, we did know there was a chance she was pregnant, as my dad took her to see a male bunny about a month before. She looked a bit bigger then normal, but wasn’t showing a huge tummy that would expect a big litter! Because a big litter it was!!! Last Thursday we did a head count and came to 9 (!!!!) baby bunnies!!! 9 very tiny cute little bunnies! :-)

Soon they will be roaming the garden! I can’t wait to see those 9 little ones run around! Made a little movie this morning of the 9 little ones, have a look and see if you can count till 9! :-)

You can also watch the baby bunnies feeding! Look carefully though! ;-)

One important tip… don’t try and pet the mother bunny while the children are feeding! She don’t like that!!! :-) I wasn’t aware I was actually making a movie, so it was pretty funny to see the following movie! And yes, she got me, and yes, it did hurt!! :-)

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A couple of days ago the news reached me that my birdy had flown away. Out the front door into the wide world. After about 17 years of taken the best care we could of the little birdy, he is no more… Flown out of our lives by accident, unable to find his way back… It’s such a strange, sad and empty feeling I will be going home next week and he won’t be there to greet me anymore…

I can only pray somebody out there will find him, take him in, bring him back to us or take care of him like we did… Worst feeling is that he must be so scared out there. Not used to flying great distances, hiding from danger, finding food and water…

The picture of my birdy my brother send me a couple of weeks ago all of a sudden is not just a sweet view from home anymore… it’s the last picture taken I will ever see of him…

I will miss you… *snif*

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Oi… One week down, one week to go. This bunnysitting is not proving to be easy. Kevin A is the sweetest little bunny, but he has quite a mind of his own. For some reason he likes to get bunny candy… in the middle of the night! :-) Yes, a smiley, because it’s quite an experience to wake up in the middle of the night and see a bunny 2 cm from your face! Begging for candy! You can’t be mad, even at that hour! ;-) Ok, I could lock the bunny in the cage at night, but I just can’t set myself to do that… I tried it the second night, but after less then 30 minutes I moved back to the living room to make sure that Kevin could roam the room at night. My compassion wins it over my need for sleep! :-)

Besides that, there is the worry. The worry about the bunny. Ever since my brother tried to be “funny” and point out all the bad things that could happen to the bunny while I was bunnysitting, I worry quite a bit… I know there is no reason what so ever to worry about the bunny as he is in tip-top shape, but I still do. Strange in a way, because I never worry about my own bunnies, but knowing how much Mette loves Kevin A, I just check up on him much more then necessary to put my mind at ease.

Finally there is his cage. Any bunny kept as a pet would be so happy and lucky to have such a big cage as Kevin A does, but to me it still feels much better when he can run through the whole room. Not that he does, as he sits under a chair most of the time, but just the idea “that he can” feels much better. When leaving the apartment he needs to go in the cage, and even though he is perfectly used to that, it still feels sad to see him behind bars… So even when I am out, I think about him being in the cage at home, and that he should be out…

Well, just one more week of worries for me. After that it’s time for Mette to worry again! ;-)

Trademark	So cute

Posted in Travel, Animals | 2 Comments »

The little bunny is growing rapidly! It has opened it’s little eyes and is very slowly starting to discover the world is a bit bigger then his little nest under mamma’s warm hair. Here some more pictures of the cutest little thing! :-)

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And the baby was a bit unexpected I may add! Snoes was calculated to give birth on Tuesday last week. So when that day arrived and nothing seemed to indicate birth, or anything related to that, we started thinking she had been “faking” the pregnancy again, like last time. So when I got up early on Friday morning to pick up Sally at the airport and looked out my bedroom window and saw Snoesy in the cage with a mouth full of her hair, I was very confused… Could she be pregnant after all?!?

Well, she sure could! :-) When I got to the cage and saw her up close, I could see that she had been pulling out a lot of hair already! She even had some big spots on her body without fur! That was exciting, as normally when bunnies start pull out their hair, they either just had her babies, or will have them really soon!

I couldn’t check straight away, because soon after I checked up on her she went into the “night”-cage and stayed in there for a long time… now we started to be quite sure she had babies already, because she would never stay in there just like that. Quite some time later, when Snoesy was out of the cage, my dad checked by sticking his hand in and he found what we already expected! A baby bunny! :-)

Just one, not normal, because normally bunnies have more then one baby, but Snoes only had one. An amazing little one. Taking the first look was very exciting! First the shock of all the hair that Snoes had been pulling out… Just unbelievable!!! Then moving the hair away searching for the little one. And finally finding it and getting surprised about how wild it was! Jumping, peeping and moving like crazy!! Probably hungry and expecting mamma’s nipple and not my fingers. But oi… the little one was so small!

Can’t wait till the day the little one will open it’s eyes and will start moving with mamma through the garden! :-)

Getting bald		The baby bunny!		The first movie (44.6 MB)

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… but it wasn’t meant to be… Snoesy wasn’t pregnant after all. Very strange, because she had never dug so many holes then in the two weeks after she had met the male bunny… Plus she had never played in the hay, let alone make somewhat of a nest in it… Strange… very strange. And sad. But hey, better luck next time! I just figure she had a fun time with the male bunny and she just wants to see him again! ;-)

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Oi, oi, oi… It’s not all fun being away from home, when your bunny is pregnant… I am just so curious about how things are going with Snoesy. The news that gets to me is just that she is doing great, looking great and only digging A LOT of holes at the moment. But that seems to be very normal for pregnant bunnies… So there is not much to worry about, but still I do and are very curious about what is going to happen!

Even more as she was “calculated” to give birth today or tomorrow… So it might happen tonight!!! Will be fun if it does and my mamma calls me in the morning when I am in class! “Sorry, I really have to take this call!” *hahaha* :-)
But we will see. See is getting her “medication” (half an aspirin in her water), to make sure she don’t get a fever when giving birth. If she does she could eat the little ones or even die, so that would be the worst nightmare, but with the medication she should be totally fine as getting the fever is almost impossible!

For now I just look at the pictures my brother send me last week. And one thing is to say, my sweet bunny still looks very sexy while being pregnant! Well, how could she not! ;-)

Snoesy		Up close		Getting candy

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The invasion. It started slowly. 3 days ago it all seemed quiet. 2 days ago the first one was spotted. Cute. Probably a scout though. Yesterday there were two and they were constantly present. Could this become a problem? Today the answer was there already, there were 4, no 5… 6!! This was to much, they had to be stopped. These mice went one bunny cage to far! :-)

Fact was the mice needed to go. They couldn’t stay. I wouldn’t have mind 1 or 2 so much, but 6 was pushing it. And for all I know, there could even be more! And they were eating Snoesy the bunnies food and could be poo-ing and pee-ing in her food and water which could make her sick. Plus the fact that when Snoesy is in her cage at night, they would keep her up all night walking around her, and harassing her… something totally not done. They had to be stopped!

Early morning I was still under the impression the mice could be caught the friendly way, so I set up the mouse-trap with a fine piece of cheese, went back inside and waited… and waited… the mice were out, all 6 at times but they totally ignored the cheese and therefore the trap… Sadness… Hours went by, but no success.

As the trap didn’t work, it was time for more drastic measures. I left the idea of trying to catch the mice. The new approach would be to keep them out! So armed with a staple-gun and several pieces of chicken-wire, I went in. Sealing all holes and cracks the mice could use to enter the bunny cage. After about an hour, all were sealed to my satisfaction. Bring it on! Try and get in now little mice! :-)

Well… actually I know better then that, as if they want in, they for sure will… it’s nearly a matter of time. It’s like mopping the floor with the water running. But so far so good… it’s two days later now and no sign of them yet… But I know they are out there! Probably preparing the next invasion!

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Just as cute, maybe a little less romantic.

Lady (l) and the tramp (r)

For you culture barbarics out there who don’t know your Disney classics, go see lady and the tramp.

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Last night when I went to bed, there was a spider in my bedroom… Normally I don’t mind a small little spider. As long as it’s in a far away corner on the ceiling and plans to set up camp there for the evening, I won’t worry and deal with it in the morning. But not last night… this spider was big! HUGE! Well, to my standards… It was sitting right in the middle of a white wall and was about 5×5cm, so to me that’s not a normal “indoor” spider anymore… yes, maybe of you live in the jungle of Borneo, Vietnam or some other exotic country, but 10 meters below sea level in Holland?!?! This spider is lost! Or was lost… I wasn’t gonna spend the night with that beast on the wall, but killing it straight away seemed like a rather brutal solution… I decided to capture it. That went smoothly so it spend the night trapped inside a up side down glass, and I was ready to sleep. I thought… That turned out harder then expected… Many questions kept popping into my head… “is he alone, or could there be more?”, “where did he come from?”, “how did he entered the room?”, “is he dangerous?”, “what is he doing here?”… Yes, I talk about the spider in the “he” form… not because I am 100% sure it was a male spider, bit with such hairy legs and back, I just want it to be! ;-)

Either way, I think I lied wide awake for almost an hour. Looking around like a hawk, being sharp as a shark and as fast as a tiger! Sweeping the walls and ceiling with my eyes over and over again. This big spider seriously freaked me out! I finally got more and more relaxed. Helped by the thought that if the spiders friends saw their friend trapped in the glass like that, they would chose somebody else to mess with! :-)

Either way, this is what he looked like:

Big nasty spider!

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The first story about our bunny didn’t start out as the best bunny story ever… With our female bunny more or less being forced to serve the sexually pleasure of the male bunny in her first days… But after the male bunny left, it has been all good news so far. She has been feeling more and more relaxed and we even has gotten a name now: Snoes.

And we couldn’t have been more happy when we figured out that she hadn’t gotten pregnant by the male bunny… which was most likely her own brother… or in best case a step-brother… That would have been a very unhealthy situation if you ask me… in our world, but also in the bunny-world.

So there won’t be any baby-bunnies just yet. Yes, just yet. Because now my dad is already thinking about arranging a blind date for her in the spring… Strange thing when I think about it… I remember as a kid I would go with my dad to the petting-zoo in our village and he would put my bunny with one of the male bunnies in his small cage at the petting-zoo and I would watch them get acquainted. And watch them get even more friendly just a couple of moments later! It was all ok, until I got upset by the male bunny being so rough with my bunny, when he was getting so excited that he started pulling her hair out and I run to my dad screaming that he had to make it stop… And after a little while, he always did.

But for now she is off the hook. And until then she will probably hop around happily through the garden and slowly but steadily moving it to total destruction! It started with her nibbling on some of the plants and flowers we have in the garden, but at some locations the nibbling has moved to simple eating and even “removing” plants from the garden! With roots and all. She ate the top bit, then started digging in the sand and pulled out the left over bit of the plant with the roots! Lovely. We look at it and smile. At some places we simple don’t care as those flowers or plants needed to be removed from the garden anyways, but at some others it’s very nice flowers or plants she is destroying! But well, I guess that comes with letting her run through the garden. If we allow that, we can impossible forbid her to not eat certain things… she is cute, but she ain’t that smart! ;-)

How it looks? Well, I will let the “before” and “after” pictures tell the story:

Snoes between the flowers	Where are the flowers?

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I visited the local vet yesterday to let her take a look at my birdy. It had been picking the feathers in his neck again and I was somewhat worried as he has done that before, but it was never this bad… So first I went to the vet without the birdy, as I didn’t like the idea of putting it in a small dark box to transport it there… but she had to see it, so I had to return with the birdy an hour later.

And that visit was a lot of things, but not what I expected from it… Her first reaction when seeing my birdies little neck was rather hysteric… she almost started screaming that she needed stitches! His neck was one big open wound… I got very scared and confused… what is she talking about?!?! Yes, there are two places in his neck where no feathers are, just smooth skin. But that has been like that for as long as we had him… and that was when we got the egg he got out 3 weeks before he was born… So, if that was already a problem, he has lived already 15 years with it without a problem… but the vet woman claimed it was not normal and he had bitten himself to end up like that… Well, that got me a bit mad, as I would know for sure if he had done anything like that! How could I not… he would be bleeding like hell if that would happen!! Finally she calmed down again and I was able to make clear that she could do a lot of things with my birdy, but stitching was not going to one of them! Then she also figured it might not be a good idea, as he would probably go bite the stitches…

Well, this set the tone for the rest of my consult… Next she got some magazine articles and internet printouts from a binder and started calling out things that were mentioned in them as solutions to the picking problem. I gave my comments on each point along the way and in the end I got a little note with the following “recipe”:
- Daily showers; I told her we already did that. She still wrote it down.
- Not with the heating, no sudden temperature changes; Well… his cage is not at the heating, plus it’s summer… the heating is not on, and unfortunately I still don’t have control over the weather outside, so don’t know where she is aiming at with this one…
- Egg food, boiled chicken, boiled egg; Well, here we got something to work with. Egg food he has, but doesn’t really like, but it’s available, chicken he sometimes eats when we eat chicken, but then it’s never boiled… Boiled egg… we will give it a shot!
- Let bird fly loose; Ok… didn’t you just hear me? The birdy is always loose! His cage never closes… So he can fly all he want!
- Green food; Yes. But what is green food? He gets lettuce and green beans, as well as apple and pear… but ok, we can figure out some more green stuff for him to eat.
- Boiled corn; Ok…
- Dried pine cone (without fungus); Will try to find one in the forrest…
- Small seeds; Sorry? Small seeds. Yes, I heard you, but why?!?! It’s a small birdy… he already eats small seeds… he is to small for the big seeds…
- 3 times a day, 15 minutes attention/play with the bird; … ?!?! Are you kidding me?!?! He gets attention all the time when there is someone at home! And play with it?!?! It’s not a dog or a cat!!!

Conclusion… € 18,- lighter and much more worried then when I came… And not only worried, also quite upset. Upset with the woman for telling me more or less that I am not threading my birdy in a good way… and that really started to annoy and upset me later when I got home, because we give the birdy truely the best life possible… He can do anything he wants and gets attention all the time!

Finally I realized I shouldn’t put so much value to the words of the vet. What does she know? She ain’t with us, so how can she judge just by looking at my birdy? As a result we will change his diet slightly and keep most things as they were. I might go to a different vet later this week for a second opinion that makes more sense!

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Well one kilo… it’s not polite to tell a girls weight, now is it? Or maybe guess low when you do… Half a kilo of cuteness then! :-)
What am I talking about? My parents new bunny! The cutest little thing. They should have had two female bunnies to start with, but one of the two turned out a be a male… A nasty male. Well nasty… dirty would suit him better. And the male bunny loved the female bunny. A lot. And often… How stupid I felt when I went to my mamma and asked her what the dirty sticky stuff on the back of the female bunny was, I don’t have to explain… :-)

So we didn’t really have an option then to let the male bunny go. The female bunny didn’t have a life… it was so scared and constantly hidden somewhere in the garden, afraid to go out… very sad, but not anymore! The male is gone and she is jumping happily around in the garden! She has all comforts of a posh bunny: plenty of space, fresh grass, carrots, food, water, bunny candy and … yes… marijuana! My dad is growing some plants in the back garden (please don’t ask why!) and the bunny seems to love to eat the marijuana leaves! And no, they don’t get high from it…

Only thing she probably worries about is the fact that just those few days with the male bunny could have been enough to get her pregnant… Well… could have gotten her pregnant 187 times… So that is just wait and see… I guess we will know in about 4 weeks… or sooner when the bunny starts to get bigger and bigger.

Just one thing missing… a name… So if anyone has a suggestion? Feel free!

All cute!		And curious…		Bunny & her cage

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Saturday morning. A quiet morning. Reading the newspaper. 10:23. *BANG*
Well… it’s hard to make the sound of a big bang in writing, but just imagine a big bang! Like a thunder very close by. The big bang scared me of course, as it came out of nowhere. It was even more scary as the bang was closely followed by loud clapping of wings and peeping (both coming from my birdy)…

The bang came from our outside area where one of the grapevines (thank you E) had given way under a heavy load of grapes, broke the iron little wires which were holding it up, lost contact with the class roof and crashed down on the floor with a big bang. My birdy was either very close to the grapevine when it came down, or actually in it, like he often is, just chilling… seeing how shocked he was, he was most likely in it… about 15 minutes after the big bang, when we managed with a lot of joined effort to get the grapevine back up, he was still looking so frightened… Nothing seemed to cool it down… He was constantly peeping and looked very scared… Now, a good hour later he is all relaxed again! Can’t be more happy and relieved! :-)

How scary it was? Well, I can’t show it better by showing you my birdy. Before and after. So please judge for yourself.

Birdy as his normal self	Birdy in shock

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Panic. There is a puma running loose in Holland! The puma has been seen yesterday and now police and hunters are hunting it down. It has to die. As a police official said:
“No, we won’t shoot it with a tranquilizer arrow. We are afraid it [the puma] will run away when we hit it. [???] We don’t want to take any chances.”

I am amazed… They make it seem like this puma is a serious thread to us! But the big pussy-cat has only one confirmed kill on his name so far, and that was a deer… And that seems quite a natural animal for a puma to kill… He or she needs to eat, and as all cats, the puma also seems to like meat. But the fact that a puma eats meat, doesn’t automatically say it will eat humans… As all wild animals, the first reaction for the puma will most likely to run away when people enter the forest and come to near.

I do understand that there is a small, tiny, little chance the puma will actually hurt someone, so let’s catch it. Catch it. Don’t kill it. Luckily the Dutch Animal Protection has now told the authorities to not kill the animal, just approach it quietly, use the tranquilizer gun and catch it. Not hunt it down like a runaway criminal with helicopters and trigger happy cops! As that makes it more scared and more likely to actually do something bad… Let’s hope they get smart and don’t just kill the poor animal…

Oh, if like me you wonder what a puma looks like, besides the sporting brand symbol on shirt or shoes, click on the picture below!

Puma

Posted in News & media, Animals | 2 Comments »