Cesar Millan can suck it
Not really. I’m kidding.
So, Moses has seemed kind of bored the last couple of days with only ME to play with. I mean, he’s mostly just a fluffy throw rug anyway, but he does like to play. I have plans to try out a dog park in the Avon area this Saturday (I have to pick up a day pass tomorrow), but what to do in the meantime? We walk around the neighborhood on a daily basis, but that’s getting old quickly. I went to the Indy Parks website today to see what parks are close to me – I figured we could walk for a good, long while and he’d get some exercise. You know, a well-exercised dog is a well-behaved dog… I’ve been watching a little too much Dog Whisperer, I think. Anyway, the closest park to me is Southwestway Park. I always thought it was just a softball park, but it does have a playground and picnic shelter, AND hiking trails.
When I read the words “hiking trails”, I had visions of the nice paved paths at Eagle Creek Park. Or at worst, the mulch-covered trails that wind through many Indiana state parks. I packed Moses up – water bowl, bottle of water, treats for the road, and plastic bags (you know, in case he left a deposit on the trail) – and we headed out. We got out of the car, I sprayed myself down with some skeeter keeper-offer stuff, and we hit the trail. It was kind of downhill at first, and a wee bit muddy, but it seemed to be gravelled so I thought we’d be okay. We came to a clearing pretty quickly, only it wasn’t so much a clearing as it was a cleared path for power lines. Whatever… we kept going, came to a fork, and Moses wanted to go left so left we went. Went a little further down an increasingly muddier trail, climbed up a little incline, and took a right. I’m thinking that at some point, we’ll come back out close to where we started, so we forge ahead – up a little more of an incline. It was doable, though I was breathing heavily by the time we got to the top. Kept going… and came to an even steeper and longer incline. Still thinking we’d come out where we started, we headed up the incline. Moses did just fine, but I THOUGHT I WAS GOING TO DIE. There’s a reason I don’t do interval training on the treadmill… I’m overweight and very, very, very, out of shape. Anyway, we kept going until we ended up in that same clearing with the power lines, only… we were two towers away from the one we started out next to. We started to walk up the next incline, and I decided that was it. We were turning around. I’d rather the devil I knew than not knowing where I was.
We made it back to the car in one piece, not really worse for the wear. Moses was still ready to play when we got home, so the half hour hike didn’t wear him out much, but I’m pretty well done for the day. I tell you, if this is going to be a regular thing, I’m canceling the gym membership.
Lady of the Flies
Oh, God. I walked into the bunny room tonight to find that a first generation set of houseflies had taken up residence in the corner by the window, over Roxy and Rosy (the girlie pigs) cage. I had noticed more flies than usual in the house today but chalked that up to open doors and windows and ill-fitting screens – it was only 83 degrees here today and was a nice, breezy day to have the windows open to air things out. Evidently, the flies are coming from somewhere else and I’m terrified that that somewhere is the bunny room. Wouldn’t you think the highest concentration would be where they hatched?
See, this perturbs me for several reasons. One: while I may not keep my rabbit room sparkling, bleachy clean, I do try and change litter boxes and clean cages frequently enough to avoid something like this happening – for me, that’s one litter box every night, or a litter box change every 5th day. If I notice that someone’s litter box seems heavy or needs to be changed I’ll even go ahead and do it. Two: I HAD a fly infestation like this four years ago which prompted me to rip the carpet/pad out of the rabbit room and paint the concrete floor. The flies had laid their eggs under a plastic storage bin where one of my rabbits had made a puddle without me knowing about it and it hadn’t dried out, so made a nice, warm environment for baby flies to grow. Third: I plain old don’t have time to eradicate flies. There’s no safe way to do it around rabbits except for fly-strips and fly-swatters, and that’s just more time than I can spare.
For now I think I’ve taken care of most of them… there may be one or two hanging out lazily by the ceiling where it’s warm, but I’ll get ‘em eventually. I just hope none of them laid any eggs anywhere. I spent about 90 minutes in the bunny room cleaning the most suspicious-looking litter boxes and a guinea pig cage, and killing as many of the buggers as I could find. These are like mutant flies… it takes more than just a swat to kill them. It seems like they get stunned, fall down, and then I have to step on them, pick them up in a tissue, and flush them to make sure they’re really gone. I’m thinking they may have come from a pile of Moses poo that I picked up and bagged yesterday before mowing the lawn; it was, shall we say, infested when I picked it up, and I foolishly put it in the garage. There were not a lot of flies in the garage, though, and not a lot of traffic in and out today, so I don’t know how they migrated in the house… but that’s my hope. Because otherwise? I have to demolish the bunny room and start all over. And I don’t know if I have the energy for that.
I HATE BUGS.
Friday Foster – Willa
Oy. It’s been a while since I’ve featured a Friday Foster rabbit… I think it’s about time I resurrected that category.
To recap (even though the majority of my readers are also IHRS volunteers), I volunteer as a foster home for domestic rabbits in need of rescue. Over the last 7 or 8 years I’ve lived with more rabbits than I can count, all of them with very different personalities and idiosyncracies. Anyone who thinks rabbits are just livestock animals needs to come and stay with me for a while… of course, I don’t think any animals are just livestock animals, but that’s a post for another day.
Let me introduce you to one of my current foster rabbits… this is Willa.
We received a voicemail at the beginning of May from some concerned members indicating that there was a domestic rabbit at a local animal shelter, and could we help? At the time we were trying to work out how many rabbits we could take to help the Missouri HRS chapter with a confiscation case they were working with, but I had room, and our commitment has always been to local rabbits first.
I picked Willa up from the shelter on May 22, not knowing what to expect. All of the shelter staff I had spoken to kept telling me what a nasty bunny she was… I imagine that if I were stuck in a tiny cage surrounded by predators, I’d probably soil myself, too. At any rate, they took my carrier back to the kennel area, and what they brought out was this beautiful, vibrant, lively Harlequin rabbit. I brought her home and set her up in a condo with a litter box full of hay, gave her some toys, a water crock, and a food bowl, and left her to settle in. Do you know, over the next 24 hours she did not leave a single pootie outside her litter box? Not ONE. So much for the “nasty” bunny.
Willa is a sweet girl, and she’ll make someone a wonderful companion. She really doesn’t like hands reaching into her condo – she tends to cower toward the back, although she’s getting better about it each time I have to lift her out and put her back in. She is not shy about letting you know that her food bowl is empty – she either fills it with her toys, or turns it upside down. She loves to be petted once she gets over the initial worry about what those hands might do, and she especially loves treats.
My hope for Willa – and for all of our foster rabbits, really – is that she is able to find a home with people who will love her and respect her for being a rabbit. So many potential adopters seem to have such high expectations – I think it’s because they have no or very little experience with rabbits, but many people don’t understand that rabbits are not like dogs or cats. Rabbits make excellent companion animals, but not all homes are the ideal homes. The goal, I guess, is to find forever homes.
If you’re interested in adopting Willa, or any of our other adoptable rabbits, please visit our website at www.indianahrs.org.
