tonyshuman wrote:
It depends on how crazy your bunny is for a jolt! I don't think you need to get those little plastic things that go into outlets like they do so babies don't stick their fingers in. However, chewing on the plug part itself happens. My guys have done it but they're voracious about cords--I think Tony's an adrenaline junkie. They've never gotten into the electrical "guts" of the plug to cause themselves damage, though, so I wouldn't worry too much. In any case, the easiest thing to do is to put furniture in front of the cord or block off areas that have lots of cords with NIC panels (behind our couch is blocked off, and now so is behind the fridge).
Here are my electrical bunny stories: (most of which have Tony to blame)
- they've actually totally ruined a floor lamp
- totally ruined 2 cell phone chargers
- ruined the cord to the wireless communicator base-thing for a wireless mouse
- used to climb up the couch and jump behind it (we had the side blocked off so the only way back there was over the couch). then, to get back out, standing ON TOP of the air purifier thingy and jumping back up to the couch-top. finally figured this out when we thought it was blocked off, but cords were getting chewed on and little poos were back there, so we knew something was up. one day i moved the air purifier, and Tony got stuck back there! now we put up NIC gates at the top of our couch too while we're going to make a wooden thing to block it off a bit more discreetly.
- and the grand finale: they've also chewed THROUGH a refrigerator cord--thank goodness it was on a safety switch so Tony didn't fry his little brain out! we're pretty sure he did it to our last fridge that "mysteriously" stopped working suddenly. we rent, so we just called the landlord that time because we didn't know why it had stopped working. the second time, we replaced the cord ourselves and NAILED an NIC grid into place so he can't get back there.
in sum, bunnies have a death wish, some more than others. bf's bunny Benjamin "doesn't ever chew on cords." whatever. he's just sneakier about it than Tony.
Oh gosh, if I was going to do an 'electrical damage' list for Mouse and Chalk (Barney and Snowy don't care for wires thank God!), it would look something like this:
* About 8 or 9 phone chargers. Me and Steve have our own 'favourite' sellers on Ebay to re-purchase more now...
* 5 laptop cords. Thankfully Apple so low voltage. One was Sony and I got it replaced under warranty. Chalk was completely fine (she had jumped on the sofa to eat it in the 15 seconds I had gone to answer the door lol) but my arm got a bit of a shock next time I sat down there! :shock:
* About 6/7 tape/scart leads for DVD players etc- when we moved house, Mouse's new hobby became to jump on/in the TV unit and chew cables :shock::shock::shock: Now we have an NIC gate round it so she can't get in, but she can still get on top if we don't watch her- so we do!
* Countless telephone wires. I'm talking a lot. If not the phoneline then the power cable for the phone itself lol. This was in the early days in our old house where the phone plug was in the living room and we didn't know just how cable hungry they were... I remember giving Chalk some meds once, and she wasn't happy about it. We put her down, and she literally looked at us, then hopped over and snipped the telephone wire, within about 2 seconds! Just to punish us!
* Fridge cable! One night, we were sat watching TV, when all of a sudden, all the mains electrics tripped. The lights were still working so we knew immediately it was a fuse from a plug. We saw Chalk sat next to the fridge looking quite pleased with herself- the fridge wire was almost completely in half :shock::shock::shock: Luckily, we're well earthed and have modern electrics, so the electrics tripped out immediately to prevent any damage- as they should do in any modern English house, so Chalk was fine, and Steve has electrical experience so he just rewired the fridge, but man was that scary!
My point is, that you need to block off anything you think there is even the slightest chance of them getting at, if they are chewers! They will always find a way. We've learnt that even if we think it's probably out of their reach, it never really is unless it's WAAAY out of reach lol... furniture or something would be a good idea in front of sockets to prevent wire chewing...
I don't say this to scare you, just to show that if your bunny is a determined wire chewer then they will find a way unless it's fully protected lol!
The cord covers helped a lot with those last little bits you need to cover up near the sockets- we used those for our phone line in the end, and wrapped insulation tape round them for extra reinforcement....
