Sunday, 8th April - The Escape

One day I came back home to be informed that Peter had wanted to explore the territory further. In other words, Peter had escaped from the garden! We must have left the small gate leading down to the garden open, and from the garden he easily found his way out around the second gate, white, since we have no brick wall surrounding our garden but only bamboo and other thick bush.

Our au-pair was the first one to realise Peter was missing! She went out into the community garden, and there was Henry, our friendly and helpful Colombian janitor, racing round the pool, and round it again shouting "el conejo!!!!!", after naughty Peter who just wouldn't let himself be caught and was running for it in a way in which only rabbits can do. It must have been a rather comic sight. Finally, between the two they did catch him and brought him back home.

This was our first lesson about rabbit fleeing. After talking about it with other former pet rabbit owners, I found out that more often than not, rabbits do have a habit of escaping from their owners' home. I was even told stories about them digging a hole half a metre deep to get out of closed gardens or courtyards.

So then I went to the shop and bought a harness for him. I thought, I want you to enjoy the fresh grass and the plants, but not at any cost! So after that day, when I let him down the garden I tied him onto our big old linden tree. He looked very cute in his little red harness, but he didn't seem to like it very much, and he kept going around the tree and everything else in it, which sometimes made the lead end up tangled up and of course he couldn't move much after that, which must have been quite unpleasant for poor little Peter.

Things were starting to get dangerous...

 

                                                                       
                                                                       the white gate






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Saturday, 24th March – Exploring the garden

After a week of seeing Peter finding his way around, in and out of the cage, and getting settled, I thought the time had come for him to have a walk in the garden. I opened the small gate leading down to the garden, but he wouldn’t cross it, so I took him and held him while walking down the three steps. Then I put him down, and he seemed quite happy because presently he ate some fresh grass, but then he quickly ran back, jumping up the steps rushedly to get back in the cozy cage. He was obviously overwhelmed by the new dimensions of his dwellings.

I gave him a short break, but after that I carried him down to the garden again, and placed him next to the lemon tree, where the clovers grow. There he went crazy, eating as many as he could and sniffing all the plants around. But again, it wasn’t long before he decided to go back to the safety of his familiar terrace. Finally, he tried going down to the garden by himself, under my close supervision, and he seemed to enjoy his new green options.

So I thought that we might as well leave that gate open during the day, so that he could walk freely from the terrace down to the garden and back up to the terrace when he would please. The only wall delimiting our garden is a thick bamboo which is not impossible to cross, although a rabbit would have to take a mighty leap down to the street if it were to go out. However, the bushes around the garden’s white entrance gate are not as thick, and Peter could easily go outside through them.

That is why we were observing him for a couple of days, trying to decide whether he could be trusted to walk freely around the garden and terrace area. Peter showed himself as a sensible rabbit, using the garden to nibble on the grass and the daisies whenever he felt like it, and jumping back up for regular food, water, hay, and comfort when it got dark. During the night we would close the gate to avoid surprise visits, because sometimes cats wandered around the community gardens outside.

tasting the grass

and going back upstairs to his bedroom

Sunday, 18th March – The warning

One of the things that you have to keep in mind when having a rabbit is to check on his water, because it could happen that the water dispenser falls out, and then the rabbit has no more water to drink. What could maybe happen actually happened, and I wouldn’t have noticed if it were not for Peter’s warning.

That evening I went to wish him good night, and when I reached out to pet him he stuck his two top front teeth into my hand –he had never done that before. He would only occasionally lick and softly bite my hands when petting him, but that was very different. He seemed anxious, and he rabidly kept going for my hand. The bite was quite hard, and the mark showed in my hand for a whole week.

When he did that I knew that something was wrong, but it was dark and it took me a while to see what it was. After I refilled the dispenser with fresh water, Peter went straight to it and anxiously drank for a couple of minutes. After that, he was totally cool and relaxed again.

Peter, next to the water dispenser

Saturday, 17th March – The adaptation

As soon as they woke up, the kids were running to the terrace to say good morning to Peter, who had spent his first night at our home. It was cold in the terrace, and M2 had a cough, so I wanted them back in the house. It was hard work to get them back in, and I was only able to make them leave Peter with the promise that we would go back to him after lunch.

The sun was strong, and Peter seemed to have found a favorite spot in the terrace, against the cold wall under the railing and the bushes, where he could enjoy a nice shadowy spot and a view of the house dwellers in the living room. Every time we looked out we would see him sitting there, sniffing and staring back at us. Sometimes he climbed to the big flowerpot next to his cage, at the corner of the terrace, and would nibble at the gardenia leaves. The next favourite spot that he found was one leap away from the gardenia flowerpot, and it was our bedroom’s window ledge.

He would stay on the ledge for hours, with his ears tucked back and his eyes half-closed, with the cuddly position of the one who has found a perfect vantage point, an observation post. It was the right place to get brushed and combed by us as well, with the cute little rabbit comb that was offered to us with all the rabbit equipment. He specially enjoyed being brushed around his head and on his cheeks.

I was surprised to see how quickly such a small animal could wolf down a plateful of grub. When I refilled it for him he came desperately to eat some more, even if the kids had already fed him a whole carrot, as well. He is not an especially big rabbit, and not especially fat either, but obviously eating is an important part of a rabbit’s life, and the result of it is that you get big amounts of small pea-sized blackish balls, mainly in his cage but also all around the terrace, where basically he trots about freely. However, rabbit droppings are perfectly organic manure for plants and gardens.

A cool spot for Peter

Friday, 16th March, 2012 - The arrival

Today, a new member has arrived to our family -a rabbit! He was offered as a present by a mother from the music school, because they had a new dog themselves, and it was barking at him and picking on him all the time. The poor thing was getting stressed because of it, and apparently his fur had been getting darker eversince -it used to be a light grey, almost white, and now it was greyish-brownish, with darker ears.

She hadn't finished making the offer and I had already accepted -yes, it was the right chance! With 7-year old I, 5-year old M1 and 3-year old M2 constantly asking for a pet, the time had definitely come to go for it. They would be so excited when they found out. So we agreed that I would pick him up on the next day. When I arrived there, his former owner had arranged a red lace around his neck, with a jingle bell hanging from it. He was so adorable, with his shiny little brown eyes sparkling bright, wide open looking at everything around him.

I instantly took him in my arms and cuddled him, and he answered with a kind of purr, while he pushed his head under my arm. I was given a nice cage with everything in it which would make our new friend's life more comfortable -sawdust for the cage floor, hay, grub, water dispenser, chalk stone for biting, even special sweets for rabbits! And I was equally given basic rabbit care instructions -no direct sunlight on the cage, no problem with the cold temperatures (Barcelona cold temperatures), protection from cats and dogs, ideally being able to access the garden in order to eat some grass and trot around. I was ready to take him home with me.

After he was introduced to the family, we had a votation for his name. The winning name was... Peter Rabbit! My kids love the Beatrix Potter character, they know his stories by heart, as well as other Beatrix Potter's animal stories. And they also pointed out something that had escaped me: The rabbit actually had a striking physical similarity with the original Peter Rabbit! We placed his cage in a shadowy corner of our terrace, and left the cage door open. He went up and down the terrace, exploring every corner, getting up on his back paws, sniffing the air and the plants around him.

Here is a picture of Peter Rabbit as I saw him for the first time: