River is not defective... she's handicapable!

We found out the other day that our sweet little River is deaf.  They were doing the annual fire alarm testing for our apartment building and when the siren sounded, poor Simon looked as if he were about to have a coronary while River happily kept cleaning her front paws after a short pause to look at Simon.  I immediately went over to them both to cover their ears because the siren was loud enough to hurt my ears so I couldn't imagine how it would've felt to them.  They kept turning the siren on at random intervals and she didn't even flinch (unlike me and Simon).  The rest of the evening was spent checking to see if she had any hearing at all--no response to whistling, loud clapping, yelling or anything.  Simon got a bit peeved with us and started thumping, which River was also oblivious to.

I let the lady who we got them from know so she could test the hearing of the mother and any other bunnies from that litter.  She offered us a refund for selling a "defective" bunny...needless to say we turned her down.  She isn't defective, just differently abled.  We love her the way she is. 

Now that we know she's deaf, a lot of her behavior makes sense, like why it was so hard to litter train her.  She couldn't hear the numerous cries of "No!  Don't pee there!"  We also realized that she's an incredible actress for mimicking Simon's responses, which explains why it took so long to figure out she couldn't hear us.  We think it also explains why her brother, Simon, was always so overprotective of her--he probably knew she was deaf from the start.  Simon took on the role of sentry, always having one ear up and constantly vigilant.  When we brought them home, he blocked her from leaving the carrier to go explore--she ended up crawling over him to get outside. 

I've found words in sign language for "no", "come here", and made one up for "hop in your cage".  On the first evening, I managed to get her to follow me 15 feet and around a corner to get her to hop in her cage using nothing but hand signals.  She's a smart little bunny that certainly doesn't let deafness keep her down!  Kind of inspirational, if you ask me.