Two bugs in a rug

          Ok, two rabbits on a carpet, but Alice and Pepper are getting on great now and settle down together regularly “as snug as two bugs in a rug”.

          They seem quite pleased with the new living arrangements, they wander in and out all day and the doors are closed at night to keep them safe.

          They’re quite happy sharing most things, it’s quite entertaining watching them eating from both ends of the same dandelion leaf like Lady and the Tramp with their spaghetti, but Alice isn’t too happy with Pepper climbing into her bird house and I’m not quite sure where I fit into the garden hierarchy yet, Alice seems to stop to see Pepper on the way to seeing me, and I’ get grumped at if I smooth Pepper before Alice when I go out to see them.

          Apart from that, everything seems to be rosy in the garden.

Run rabbit, rabbit run

          One more update on Alice and Pepper and then I’ll leave them in peace to enjoy the garden without the little red box being pointed at them for a while.

          Last night they spent the night together in the big hutch, the smallest space they’ve been confined in since Pepper arrived.  I popped out to check on them about half an hour after I put them to bed and they were both huddled on the shelf where Alice used to sleep so I went to bed happy, and hopefully so did they.

          This morning I set about the hutches with a screwdriver, a saw, nails and a hammer, and numerous other tools with the plan to join everything together.  I couldn’t risk taking apart the small hutch yesterday incase everything turned pear-shaped and I needed it back for Pepper for a while longer.

          After moving the two hutches and the run around on the patio like pieces of a jigsaw I finally found a spot where they would fit together and started taking bits of wood off here and there, and adding more from the shed, everything goes into the shed so it can be used again if needed ~ and I made good use of the everythings today.   Now the two hutches and the run are all attached so that when we put the two furry friends to bed at night they can have the use of all three but still be perfectly safe until morning.

          Alice loves to play with the offcuts of wood, I build them up like building blocks and she picks them up and throws them around for me to build them again.  It would appear Pepper likes them too.

          While I was busy D.I.Y.ing I put a spot of paint on some bits of fresh wood so that it will all be the same colour on the second coat.  Pepper just watched from a distance, but Alice …

          … Well Alice now has brown fence paint on the end of her nose !

Getting to know you

          Most of you already know Alice so here’s a little more about her new friend, Pepper too.

          Pepper came to us as an indoor rabbit, he’d been a bit mischievous as a garden rabbit in a garden with a four-foot fence and two cats ~ following the cats in his family over the fence to go out to play.  Having wintered indoors, we had to wait until spring finally arrived before he could move to his new home with us in our garden.

          Pepper moved into Alice’s old hutch with a mesh run attached to it so that they could both see each other, but not cause any harm if they decided they weren’t going to get along.  In theory I was supposed to put them together for their first meeting in the bath, a neutral small space where I could watch them intensely, but since they seemed to have got over any initial aggression and were quite comfortable together through the mesh, I skipped that bit and let them both out into the garden with close supervision.

          We took a little risk here since our garden was Alice’s territory and in theory she would defend it against the new intruder.  At first there was a little scuffling but that didn’t last long at all and they soon settled down, all be it at different ends of the garden.

          Once they’d both accepted the garden was for sharing, the next stage (as my rabbit consultant ~ Middle Daughter~ explained) was to compete for the garden hierarchy.  This seemed to take a sort of jousting format.

          Alice was usually the instigator, facing Pepper nose to nose in a sort of stand-off, but he would just put his nose down on the ground to be washed and she always backed down first.

          Pepper seems very laid back, he didn’t get annoyed at Alice at all he just kept putting his head down and then resuming his grass-munching when she went away.

          They seemed quite happy sharing smaller spaces in the garden and I started to leave them outside without supervision, just checking on them every half hour or so, I guess Alice got bored first and gave in to Pepper’s request to have his ears washed.  I spotted the grooming as I checked on them though the window and grabbed my camera to catch Monday’s photo … “the first kiss”.

          There’s still a little way to go yet, I’ll be taking the run away on the old hutch this weekend, and hoping to have them both sleeping in the new hutch by Monday, then with a little fixing, patching and building, I’ll join the two hutches together and they’ll have a nice place to live, each with a new friend.

Making progress

Snowdrops

          Not quite the kind of snowdrops I was hoping to find as I peered out from the kitchen doorway into the back garden last weekend - although if you look closely at the bottom right corner of the picture you can just about see one of the flowering snowdrops hidden away in the tree pot underneath the plastic greenery I pushed in there to protect them from “predators” … most of them came up blind this year because Alice ate them last year.

          The weather once again put paid to any plans I had for working in the garden on Sunday, but today I out-foxed it, I was up and about early and out with the jig-saw and hammer and nails and finally tonight Alice will spend her first night in the new hutch.

          If everything works out according to plan, there will be some excitement in the garden this weekend, and lots of pictures of it to share too.