Bunny pile!

Simon learns to improvise, adapt and overcome when cleaning River's fur.  She flopped down facing away from him (exhausted from a long week of bunny cuteness), so he decided to just drape himself over her to reach her forehead.
We hope you all have a nice and relaxing weekend and we'll be back on Monday!

Simon the photobomber strikes again!

He's done it enough times now that I know he's doing it on purpose.  He waits until he sees the orange light for the camera focus to come on and then rushes in front of River to be in the pic.  I don't even know where his front feet are he's moving so quickly here, which caught River's attention making her turn her head to see him.  Sneaky little bun!

Behold!

I'm sure there's a magic trick reference to be had here.

The Great Pellet Crisis of 2012.

What do you mean, "The pellet container is empty?!"  We can run out of pellets?!  Why weren't we informed of this sooner?

Okay, don't panic...we just need to figure out how this scoop thing works.  It can't be that hard if that incompetent human can do it.

We kind of like you, but you do understand that this can never happen again, right?
Oh the drama involved in me mixing together their timothy hay-based and alfalfa-based pellets!

Whatcha doin'?

Simon isn't one to hop up onto the bunny condo roof, so he'll just watch River tear off strips of cardboard from this vantage point.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Not quite what I was expecting when I told them to draw a turkey for Thanksgiving.  Once again, we're proud of Simon and a bit disturbed by River.
We hope you all have a happy Thanksgiving and for those who don't celebrate this particular holiday, we hope you have a great day too!
Have an awesome weekend and we'll be back on Monday!

River helps me prepare Thanksgiving dinner.

River is my little furry shadow in the kitchen.  Here she is begging for some celery that I'm using for Thanksgiving stuffing.

Surely you need baby carrots...if not, can I have some anyway?

And this is when my little helper got ejected from the kitchen.  I honestly didn't expect her to attempt to delve into the crisper drawer for the romaine, much less hop into the refrigerator.  Not cool.  For anyone wondering, yes, I did immediately disinfect any area she could've reached while in there.

Simon is still the beta bun.

River just realized how much fun pushing Simon's toy dump truck around the house is.  Mostly because she's exerting her alpha bun superiority by playing with his favorite toy.  I'm kinda surprised that she's doing it by keeping one paw on the back of it while hopping forward with her others.

Simon isn't too keen on sharing his toys with River after their latest scuffle for alpha bun supremacy.  River kept her title and Simon came away missing a small tuft of fur on his rump because he decided to be stubborn and keep chasing her.

Simon smash!  I think he's attempting to show River that she wouldn't like him when he's angry.  Too bad she is completely ignoring him today.  Attention is Simon's Achilles' heel and River exploits it for all it's worth after their dominance scuffles.

It's a good thing he's repairing his damaged pride by taking his frustrations of still being beta bun out on a toy instead of picking another fight with his sister.  Well, at least they aren't fighting now.  The saga continues...

Juxtabuns.

I don't really know what was going through their heads at this moment in time.  It looks like something you'd expect to find on a music album cover.  Maybe they want this to be used for another of Rush's album covers since the Presto album was a big hit among other musically-minded bunnies.

Danger Bun will never surrender!

Poor Simon looks like he's pleading with me to stop his sister (aka:  Danger Bun) before she does something stupid...like fall over backwards off the back of the couch.  Yes, I did stop her, but it was a near thing.  I have no idea what River finds so fascinating about our window coverings.
Danger Bun does not understand why I keep thwarting her exploration of everything interesting in our home by scooping her up and plonking her on the carpet.  What River lacks in good sense, she makes up for in sheer tenacity.

River dances with herself.

Well, so long as she doesn't try to dip herself we should be safe!
On that note, I hope everyone has a great weekend and we'll be back on Monday!

No Simon, that's a bad Simon!

This is Simon (aka: Mr. Thumpy Clumperson) sulking after being repeatedly scolded for thumping every hour on the hour the night before.
Initially, I thought it was River making the noise because she's thumped before while having a nightmare and being deaf, didn't wake herself up.  To my sleep-deprived surprise, as soon as I checked River's cage, Simon decided to have an all-out conniption fit of loud thumping because I was ignoring him.  I rushed over to his cage to calm him down before he woke everyone within earshot.
I tried to scold him after realizing that he was doing this for attention by scooping up his front paws to ensure he was paying attention to me...he proceeded to happily lick my hand like an attention-starved puppy.
It was a long night because I had to stop him each time he started thumping by picking him up and saying, "NO thump, Simon."  Keep the command simple...bunnies seldom care about proper grammar (and at 4am, I didn't either).
Simon is lop flopping on my first attempt to sound proof his cage.  Turns out that it's pretty comfy.

Sadly, I think he took getting his own towel as encouragement.
Night 2 didn't play out much better.  More attention thumping (about 3 rounds worth of it).
I had decided to try a different tack--lay out the gray towel under his cage to help muffle the sound and not give him the attention he was seeking.  When he realized he wasn't being heard (we were ignoring him), he became louder.  Not cool.
I had to go out to stop him, but this time I got down on his level, blew a huff of air at his fur to get his attention (all the lights were off), then proceeded to turn my back on him and sit down for a count of 10, then walk away from him without acknowledging his presence.
Success!
This is bunny-speak for, "You really screwed up and I'm mad at you."  The fact that I didn't look at him afterwards told him he wasn't forgiven for his transgression.  At least the episodes of thumping were less than the night before.  Progress is good!

Day 3 I decided to get creative and if you look closely, you'll see that on top of the gray towel there is a slate colored pillow case just under the bottom of Simon's cage.  I decided to place about 12 layers of cut-up tee-shirts, sweatshirts, felt and that rubber cupboard liner stuff to damp the sound.
To hedge my bets after tapping the bottom of his cage and still noticing a good amount of sound, I placed shredded paper bedding under his hand towel to pad the bottom of his cage.
Poor River is confused why Simon is getting fussed over and wonders how come she can't have cool stuff in and under her cage too.  Short answer, she'd starve herself by hiding her food and never finding it again once it got mixed in with the bedding--she is quite the digger.

Night 3 I discovered that if you build a better bunny sound-proofing system, the bunny just cranks the volume up to 11.
Here is Simon at 2:53am having achieved his primary objective of waking the little human up.  It's like he's saying, "Oh, hi!  Well, since you're up, wanna play with some of my toys?  The cream cheese box is really fun to stick your head in and toss about--I even hang it off the side of my cage!"
I snapped the pic, then did the whole back-turn 'I'm ignoring you' thing.
Success!  That was the only time he thumped that night!
Hopefully this will be the last of it and I will have broken him of this bad habit.  Only time will tell.
UPDATE:  We think we figured out the problem--bunny separation anxiety.  Here's the link to my post http://bunnies-and-sunshine.blogspot.com/2013/07/who-knew-this-was-thing.html hope this helps!

Bunny snuggle.

Sometimes you've just got to snuggle some bunny.

Insert inappropriate comment here...

I choose to believe that River is blowing a raspberry on Simon's tummy.  You can come up with your own scenario to describe this pic.

Hop on top.

This is how River gets onto the couch.  I wondered how she always ended up in a sitting position right after hopping up...mystery solved!  Impressive amount of air between her and the couch cushion--good thing she has her ears out to help slow the landing.  It kind of looks like she's levitating.  If pics had sound effects, you'd be hearing, "sproing!"

Bunnies playing leapfrog.

I figured that we'd end the week with a pic of the bunnies at play.  Hope you all have a great weekend and we'll be back on Monday!

Our bunny has super powers!

River has taught herself how to fly.  She now prefers to be called Superbun...and she wants a cape.

The bunnies watch the election results reporting.

Simon and River are perplexed how reporters can call a precinct's election winner with only 5% of the population reporting.  Thus far, they are unimpressed with the human voting process as they experience their first presidential election.

Hop the Vote!

Simon and River just wanted to remind all humans in the U.S. to vote for their favorite (or least non-favorite) candidate today.  Seriously.  They aren't kidding here.  They'll be very disappointed in you if you don't vote.  You don't want to disappoint Simon and River, do you?  Now, log off your computer and go vote.  If you've already voted, you've won their approval...for today.  If you're visiting us from another country, grab some popcorn and watch the events here unfold.

Bad to the bun.

Simon has been a bit rebellious after recovering from his bout of GI stasis.
Simon would like me to point out that I was using my creative license and a non-negligible amount of poor Photoshop skills to create this likeness of him.

Simon's stomach didn't weather the storm well...

Poor Simon did not have a great time with hurricane Sandy.  Her banshee-like howling caused the little guy to get spooked and stop eating his hay overnight.  I woke up to find the little guy draped over the edge of his litter box (he'd fallen asleep in it), which is something he never does.  I gently scooped him up to find him laying on top of an untouched pile of hay.  Not a good sign if he hasn't eaten in 8 hours, so early GI stasis was what we were looking at.  I managed to get him to nibble on some oats and a bit of celery, then let him out with River to see if that would lift his spirits and encourage him to eat a bit more.

River took Simon's inactivity as permission to play with all of his toys and to sample any food or mint tea I set in front of him.

Feeling slightly cranky from an icky tummy, Simon decided to get away from River by visiting our "library" for a bit.  Sadly, his hiding spot was discovered a short time later.

This is when we started to wonder if River might be just a teensy bit autistic given her utter lack of social skills in noticing that her brother was not feeling well.

Okay, make that autistic savant since she's looking at my fundamentals of clinical chemistry book.  I choose to believe that she was looking for a book to figure out what was wrong with Simon and simply couldn't read the title from the other side of him, hence her hopping over him in the previous pic.  Yay!  She was doing a tough love thing earlier.  Yep, that's what she was doing.

After some mint tea and some greens, Simon finally started feeling better later that evening and was able to use his litter box again.  Yay, we didn't need to take him to the vet!
So, to summarize:  Bunnies can get really stressed out, stop eating and give themselves GI stasis.  Mint tea, lots of greens and timothy hay helped to sort him out and get things moving again.