Lost Rabbit

[Liung]

The enclosure wall was a solid sheet of flat wood. Plywood, I think it’s called.

This is what it looked like from the outside:

4’ wide by 8’ long and I thought it was 5’ high but now I’m thinking it was probably 4’ or a bit more than that. The 4’ side swung in on a large piano hinge.

I never actually saw her get out, we had absolutely no idea what was happening, since I’d put her in her cage, go to bed, wake up, and the room would be trashed, poop everywhere... and she’d be in her cage, which still had both its doors closed, looking at us innocently. The only reason we were sure it was her and not Picca or Lahi was that the poop was too big to be them.

And we had NO IDEA how she was doing it until I finally noticed that the door on top of the cage had its side latches undone every morning, even though the front main latch was still closed.

Let it also be noted that this was when we first got Delilah, and she was inside her cage inside the enclosure so that she (an unspayed female) could interact and make friends with Lahi and Picca without Picca (an unspayed highly territorial female) trying to rip her face off.

So it was finally concluded that Delilah, every night, was undoing the side latches of the door, squeezing through the gap, then while standing on top of her cage jumping over the giant wall to where there was thankfully a pile of stuff on the other side instead of a straight drop, climbing down the pile of stuff, throwing herself a party all night long trashing everything...

Then climbing BACK up the pile of stuff, jumping BACK over the wall to the top of her cage, squeezing BACK through the side of the cage door, so she could be innocently in her cage for morning.

All while not a) breaking a leg, b) getting savaged by the highly territorial female running free in the enclosure, or c) EVER BEING CAUGHT.

I started putting metal clips on the side of the cage door and it never happened again. Once she had fully bonded to Lahi and Picca I left her cage open for all three to sleep in, and also redesigned the enclosure to have the cage up against the wall-wall instead of the enclosure wall.

Obviously we can never know for sure that that’s what was happening, but no one could think of any other explanations, despite how insane “she was undoing the door’s side latches, squeezing out, and then also squeezing back in” sounds. It stopped when we clipped the door closed in a way that required thumbs to open and didn’t resume after the cage was open but moved away from the wall.



The only other time she’s ever managed to escape from that enclosure was when they’d managed to knaw away enough on the corner of the door that they could get a good grip on it, and somehow by their own tiny selves hauled open a 4’ solid wooden door. That was easy to figure out though because they didn’t close the door behind them, so it was obvious what was happening. We added a latch and patched the hole and that was that escape attempt foiled.

The most I have ever personally seen her jump (and I’ve got my measuring tape out right now, lol) is 2’4”, and it was entirely ungraceful and nearly gave me a heart attack thinking she was gonna fall and die. I’d left the doors open on the middle section of the condo and she somehow decided it would be a good idea to try and jump up without the ramp there. She’s also jumped down from there without a ramp.



I swear this bun has not a bit of common sense or, yenno, SURVIVAL INSTINCTS in her head!

 

[Blue eyes]

Who knows what goes on in their funny little heads! The rabbit I see in your last two photos looks very much like the mini-lop in my avatar. My Sapphire had to be the most feisty and curious rabbit I've had. She had attitude to spare!

There was a thread on RO awhile back talking about mini-lops and their apparent "attitude."

 

[Liung]

Yep! Delilah’s probably a little quirkier than most because she had no rabbit interaction for most of her first year and was instead raised by dogs. It took Picca and Lahi a very long time to teach her how to be a proper rabbit, and even today she will sometimes forget to hop and start walking instead. As rabbits are not actually built to walk like a dog, she looks absolutely ridiculous. But a lot of the time it’s her preferred method of locomotion when she’s going anywhere slower than a full dash.

But back to the original topic before this tangent of Delilah being an insane escape artist... to contrast against her antics, a small baby cottontail I saw couldn’t even jump over a roadside curb. When he sat up he could peer over it pleadingly at his mom on the grassy boulevard, but try as he might he could not jump over that curb. Because that’s how awful American cottontails are at jumping.