Bunny Story : Scout, Sage and the Mouse.

No, I didn't gain two bunnies, this is a story from the past.

Scout, the bunny on the right, was a breeding bunny before she hopped into my life. Her opinion on anything smaller her and furry was its a baby bunny and it must be destroyed. Sage, the bunny on the left, was a big softie and tried to adopt everything fuzzy.. big or small.  Her opinion on a Husky was he was perfectly nice until he licked her.

One day, I found a mouse in the bathroom. A cute little brown field mouse. I think the yelp was more surprise at seeing it than any fear of the rodent. So, off I went to Home Hardware to pick up a humane trap. Alas, when I came home, Scout had found him and there was, uhm, bits of mouse in the house .. up and down the hallway. That was fun to clean up.

I put the trap out just in case the mousie had any friends and went out to plant lupins. (Still one of my favourite flowers even if most of the western world thinks they're weeds.)

When I came back in I found Sage by the litterbox growling at Scout, Scout growling at thumping at Sage, Sage boxing the air at Scout .. and basically it looked like world war three was about to erupt. 

Sage had a pet mouse in the litterbox. The mouse seemed fairly oblivious to it all, it was happily munching of the seed tops in the timothy hay. I grabbed Scout and petted her while I debated what to do. The mouse decided it was full and was off again.. Sage nudged it back in with her nose. Yup. I now have TWO bunnies who think mice are baby rabbits.

"It's NOT a baby rabbit!!!!" I tell them both. Scout is now growling at ME and Sage. I put her in the bathtub and close the sliding door. It was the only place in the house that could hold her for more than two minutes. She could wiggle under doors. She could hop any barrier shorter than five feet. I wouldn't have put it past her to have figured out how to open the shower doors if I'd had to put her in there more than once in a very blue moon.

Going back to the living room, I say to Sage, "You're giving up the mouse." 

Sage eyed me warily. "Whatchoo up to, human?"

I approached. Sage stood her ground, sitting up on her hind legs and boxing the air with her front "You're not getting my kit!" she declared. Fortunately, while they could run faster, I was more nimble than Scout and Sage. I managed to snag Sage and shove her in the carrier without getting bitten.

Now, onto The Mouse.

The mouse is watching me veeeery carefully. "She tooks out da big mouse wif no problem, what chance do I have???" so it dived into the hay. That's fine, I picked up the litterbox, mouse, hay, pine pellets and all, took it out to my defacto compost heap and dumped it. (Okay, I didn't dump the mouse, I sort of shimmied him out.)

Litterbox gets purified and left outside on the deck for the stink to wear off while they get their tertiary litterbox. I let Sage out of the carrier to check all over for injuries, signs of bites, anything. Nada. She puts up with it very well, I put her down and she rushes over to the litterbox to investigate. No mousie. THUMP. She runs off to her hidey and leaves me staring at bunny butt.

Off to the bathroom where there's a very angry looking ND in my bathtub. I pick HER up and give her her second check over of the day. Nope, nothing visable on the squirming, cute, adorable, very irritated mess of fur. I put her down IN the litterbox which she immediately starts sniffing and digging in. Satisfying herself that the interloper is gone, she hops out, thumps at me and disappears under the coffee table.. to present me with bunny butt. She kept looking over her shoulder to make sure I knew how much trouble I was in.

So, back outside I went to find dandelions to pacify my roommates with. When I came back in, I was scum with dandelions.. which meant they were nice enough to eat my dandelions before thumping at me and going back to being mad at me and each other. 

I can only imagine what they'd have thought of pet gerbils..