My Bunny Story
January 14th, 2012
Spike, lounging under the Country Craftsman spinning wheel I used to own.
Today was a bunny grooming kind of Saturday. I have three rabbits – two angora boys and a netherland dwarf little lady. They’re our only pets right now, although we’d love to get a dog and plan to as soon as our lives recover from this whole start-up experience and we have more of an idea of what our work schedules will be like.
Bunnies are great pets, I’ve discovered. I never really was into them as a kid, although my sister had a lovely white dwarf rabbit named Marsha (short for Marshmallow, of course) that was best friends with my awesome guinea pig, Abby. I don’t really remember much about Marsha, other than how much fluffy white fur she shed. I have clear memories of my mom vacuuming her with a long extension hose on her canister vac. Marsha didn’t seem to mind, as I recall.
Fast forward to seven or so years ago. I was a new spinner, absolutely enthralled with the incredible world of natural fibers out there for me to try. I really wanted sheep – but I lived in the city and there was no way it was going to happen. I started thinking about angora rabbits. I read what other spinners think about angora and how the yarn they spin turns out: it’s softer than cashmere, warmer than wool, and when handspun in the correct manner, barely sheds. It all gets my mind going, and when I attend the WI Sheep and Wool Festival that year, I come across a very friendly breeder who has a couple of french angoras to sell. I didn’t make a decision that day, but after going home and talking it over with my family, my sister said she would love to get a pet rabbit, and as long as I helped with the grooming she’d be happy with an angora. So my mom and I headed back to the festival the next day, and we took Spike, a wonderfully sweet Siamese Sable buck home with us for my sister.
I ended up adopting Spike when my sister’s life no longer allowed her to take care of him a year or so later. In the mean time, I had also gotten two adorable Jersey Wooly girls – what most people would refer to as dwarf angoras. And a year later, I added a stunning Copper Satin Angora who was named Ferguson by a close friend who I owed a naming favor. He soon became known as Gus.
For the longest time I wanted to keep my rabbits indoors with me, but I had experienced horrible allergies (leading to chronic sinus infections) when I had the girls in my bedroom for a while, and the places I lived weren’t very pet friendly. Instead, the bunnies lived in outbuildings, sheltered from the weather in spacious cages. It wasn’t up until we bought our house in August of 2010 that I was able to bring them indoors to live in our basement.
Since then, the bunnies have slowly but surely been expanding their territory. Unfortunately, I lost both of my little girls last year. It was so sad, because they were only six years old but there’s no doubt in my mind that they had a rather insidious little parasite called e. cuniculi that slowly but surely wears at a bunny body and attacks strongly when stressful conditions occur. While I was nursing them I brought them upstairs so that I could keep a closer eye on them. Spike came upstairs to keep one of them company after the other passed, and soon my ‘craft room’ was more accurately referred to as the ‘bunny room.’
We’re still in a transition period, but at the point, Spike is a 24/7 (mostly) free range house rabbit, spending his days lounging around the living room, occasionally joining us to watch a movie in the TV room/office, and spending every night in my craft room. Gus lives in a generous sized dog exercise pen in the basement next to Puff, the little bossy but smart rescue bunny who came to live with us last summer. We bring Gus and Puff upstairs to play a couple of times a week (we’re trying for more) and when we do, we just close the door to Spike’s my craft room.
The bunnies are almost completely litter trained, and other than Gus’ love of electrical cords they are very well behaved. Spike has earned his spot upstairs by being so well behaved we have no problem leaving him out while we’re gone.
So I’ve come to terms with the fact that my primary reason for owning rabbits is because they’re wonderful little animal souls with adorable antics and soft sweet furry noses that just beg to be petted. At this point I’d be happy to have short haired rabbits, since grooming is less than my favorite activity by now. Don’t get me wrong – the fiber is beautiful – but I have a lifetime supply already. Angoras shed every 3-4 months, producing about a paper grocery bag full each time. Multiply that by two full size and two pint size bunnies and five years and you’ve got a LOT. Even when I do use their fiber in projects, a little goes a long way. I have spun some beautiful pure angora yarn, but I prefer to blend it 1 part angora to 3 parts wool or other fiber.
However, grooming still has to be done. I thought it might be useful to share a little bit of my tools for those of you who might also have fluffy bunnies, which I will share in my next post.
