Not a Sweet Little Bunny

[Carrot Top]

More on pets and on eating pets: Bunny has continued to have difficulties learning how to be a house bunny, though I have tried to do everything the sites and books advise. He is not a happy house bunny.

And in his unhappiness, he continues to inflict damage on the house and therefore on the family, in ways, as my time continues to be spent scrubbing up messes and washing things which the smell will never really probably come out of.

I can not, really can not, see keeping an animal confined to a cage for twenty-four hours a day, but every time he comes out the difficulties start over again.

Last night we tried to put a bunny leash on him to take him for a walk to keep him busy and hopefully make him happy. He did not like the bunny leash and scraped his way up me, scratching me all over then he did a daredevil jump off my back to the floor. Then he started limping.

In order to catch him we had to first remove all the furniture from my son's room as he would skitter from under one thing to under another. I then carried the four foot by three foot cage into his room so that we could try to tempt him into it. We needed to do this in a quick manner of some sort, for it was apparent with his wild jump that he had broken his paw and needed to get to the vet which closed in half an hour.

We made it somehow, getting to the vet just as they were closing. Bunny stayed there overnight and this morning he has been diagnosed with a dislocated shoulder which will require fixing.

There is only one "exotic animal" vet and he will be in the office in several hours to give full advice.

How does this have anything to do with food? Because when I talked to the "regular" vet who called me this morning, she told me that this bunny we have here in the house is not a bunny who should be a pet. This bunny is a bunny that has been bred for food. It is a food bunny.

Yet it is being sold in petstores as a pet bunny.

Trouble, trouble, trouble.

Can a tiger change his stripes?

I am a great animal-lover. . . take in strays etc., always have. Yet this is a distinct thing from being an animal-lover.

They are selling food animals as pets. How can we have the gall to expect an animal which is not bred to be a thing to be a thing? How, really, can we have the stupidity to think we can somehow "train" a natural, normal, healthy, part-of-the-foodchain animal to be something that it is not?

Yet there they are, in each and every petstore. With no warnings given.

The vet likened it to trying to bring a Rottweiler into the house to be friends with a new baby.

Not natural.

There are animals that we eat, and then there are animals that we have as pets. Obviously we can not expect any pet-store to offer good advice on this, and as far as bunnies go, I do not think these facts are generally known, such as one might know about a Rottweiler.

Even the book I bought my son to read (ah, yes, it was reccomended by the pet store. Sigh) did not say anything about the difference between "food breeds" and "pet breeds".

Oooh. I am steaming. I am angry and very sad, too, that both Bunny and us, are in this contorted situation, and wonder if there is a good fix.

Moral: Be sure that your intended pets are definitely intended as pets by breeding and nature, not food by breeding and nature. Double-check, again, even if you think you know by "general knowledge".

Edited April 27, 2007 by Carrot Top (log)

[Carrot Top]

Double post.

Edited April 27, 2007 by Carrot Top (log)

[srhcb]

Every time I see you've added a post to this thread I experience a sense of foreboding while I wait for it to load. Today it seems the feeling was appropriate?

I certainly didn't know there was a difference between petting bunnies and eating bunnies either. I suspect the eating bunnies are more directly descended from wild rabbits, which I know don't take kindly to domestication.

Perhaps your vet, or local animal shelter, knows of a place that will accept homeless rabbits , and you can get your son a more appropriate pat?

SB (suggests Guinea Pigs )

[plk]

It's really sad, but not surprising that the pet store sold bunnies that weren't socialized correctly and were meant to be food. The breeders who sell to pet stores are uniformly awful. There are actually some great, tame, litterbox-trained rabbits in animal shelters (at least around here) because people get tired of even the nicest bunnies. I'd really keep working on the training.

http://www.rabbit.org/faq/sections/training.html

http://www.rabbit.org/faq/sections/litter.html

http://www.clickerbunny.com/clickercritterarticles.htm

http://www.clickertraining.com/node/306

And not to criticize your vet too much for an offhand remark, but those are some weird ideas he has about rottweillers -- not that I'd leave any animal with teeth alone with a baby. Maybe he's seen The Omen too many times.

[MissAmy]

Carrot Top, that is the saddest story I have heard in a really long time. Breeders who sell to traditional pet stores have some very, very bad practices. I wish I could offer some constructive advice beyond "eat the little bugger" but I can't. Do you have an outdoor patio area where the rabbit could be kept while you guys aren't home?

[Carrot Top]

Every time I see you've added a post to this thread I experience a sense of foreboding while I wait for it to load.    Today it seems the feeling was appropriate?

I certainly didn't know there was a difference between petting bunnies and eating bunnies either.  I suspect the eating bunnies are more directly descended from wild rabbits, which I know don't take kindly to domestication.

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Yes, the sense of foreboding is unfortunate here with this situation. I'm sad to have posted things that cause that, but also feel that since this is a real situation where something that is being bred to be eaten has been sold as something that can be petted and not eaten, and there seem to be some huge problems, I don't want anyone else to have to be in this situation because they *didn't know* there was a difference in these breeds either.

I just talked to the specialist vet and he said that this breed of bunny, based on what they are bred to be and what they are naturally, can be "intractible" as pets.

It's really sad, but not surprising that the pet store sold bunnies that weren't socialized correctly and were meant to be food.  The breeders who sell to pet stores are uniformly awful. 

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Yes, I told the vet I was upset with the pet store people and he said that they were "just high school kids who don't really know enough". Right. I didn't know enough either, but they are in a position where they are advising people. Yikes.

Maybe he's seen The Omen too many times.

Maybe. I feel rather as if I am living "The Omen" right now.

[Carrot Top]

Carrot Top, that is the saddest story I have heard in a really long time. Breeders who sell to traditional pet stores have some very, very bad practices. I wish I could offer some constructive advice beyond "eat the little bugger" but I can't. Do you have an outdoor patio area where the rabbit could be kept while you guys aren't home?

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Nope.

The vet is unsure whether Bunny will make it through surgery, so we will see.

Here . . . if there is good news and it all works out great, I promise to post and tell you how it did.

If it does not all work out great, I won't post about it.

.............................................

Regardless, it was good to hear all the thoughts on this subject, as it has developed. Thank you all for that.

[sadie_siamesecat]

Oh, this has taken quite the serious tone. I can't believe after all this...poor little food bunny. Your subject topic was quite prescient, no?

I'm sorry for bunny, your son, for your poor household that has taken quite a bunny-beating!

Looking ahead to a possibly bunny-less future--I don't think there are any "food hamsters."

[Carrot Top]

I'm sorry for bunny, your son, for your poor household that has taken quite a bunny-beating!

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We live in Blacksburg, Virginia which is where Virginia Tech is. So our bunny-beating taken pales in comparison to other sorts of natural or unnatural scenarios which occurred here last week which still linger in ways to affect all of us (and all of those who watched from other places).

I still think our bunny experience was a silly (and I say that in a tone of slight self-disgust) suburban scenario. In general, people think of meat as coming from plastic packages. Therefore all animals become cute extensions of ourselves rather than fodder for survival as in a serious agricultual environment. And that is where problems can occur. Yes, I sensed it. And I tried to pretend it away. Obviously there are animals who make excellent pets, we always have some of them in our home. But then there are animals who will not, no matter how one tries to enforce "petdom" upon them.

From Bunny's eyes, I am quite sure that he might have felt as if some aliens bred him into captivity then took him into a strange difficult place to live. A boy's room, which regardless of the toys, the towers made of cardboard boxes, the lovely bed which could be jumped onto and peed on, the cords which could be gnawed to try to do in his captors (me, obviously, as I remember that electric shock ) yet which did not have grass and trees and brambles and bugs and the sounds of birds, the smell of the earth . . . which did not allow any way to really really jump and run and hop in answer to any of the things heard or smelled or sensed. In other words, from Bunny's eyes, I am sure he might have felt we were out to give him a life that was not his in any real way that would feel right and good to him.

From the natural world's eyes, this Bunny was bred to be part of a food chain. The confusion started with this Bunny when we tried to make out that he was not, that he could become what we wanted him to be for our own particular purpose. Ah. The purpose? Merely to love him? And naturally, to have him behave as if he loved us back, even if he was finally only merely pretending to for the food.

From my eyes, I felt wrong about this bunny in the first place and really should have listened to that feeling no matter how much I was encouraged to ignore it, both by my son who wanted a bunny and by the pet store people who obviously will sell whatever they can encourage the average sucker to buy. Perhap Drew wanted a bunny based on the ideas of soft cuddly bunnies that we read of in stories, that we see on cartoons (even though some of those are not cuddly but they are *full* of amusing human characteristics ) who then got a bunny of a sort who was basically just a Food Model Bunny who regardless of ongoing help and assistance and training could stretch himself no further to become a different sort of Model Bunny. Limited by . . . I don't know. Genetics? It always sounds intelligent to use that word even when most of us really don't have a clue as to what we are talking about when we pull it out of the Word Hat.

And once again, the mistakes I always make do not come from saying "no" too often. They come from saying "yes" at various times from wanting to be "nice". Sickening, really, that this should be so.

So, one more experience to chalk up to being too nice. And for a while I'm going to repeat to myself over and over, "Yes, Bunny *did* turn out to be a Food Bunny. That's what he was. Tigers do not change their stripes."

And I'll be watching out for Food Bunnys who try to pass themselves off as not being what they are. Because if you don't eat them, they might end up eating you. Just a natural thing.

Edited April 28, 2007 by Carrot Top (log)

[Carrot Top]

And really. It just came to me. With my "screen name" being what it is I never should have allowed a bunny in the house in the first place.

[srhcb]

And really. It just came to me. With my "screen name" being what it is I never should have allowed a bunny in the house in the first place.

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All's well that ends well?

SB (unless we're talking well done)

[Carrot Top]

All's well that ends well?

SB (unless we're talking well done)

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From "As You Like It"

Sweet are the uses of adversity,

Which, like the toad, ugly and venemous,

Wears yet a precious jewel in his head;

And this our life exempt from public haunt,

Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,

Sermons in stones, and good in everything.

Know what I mean, jellybean?

[Lapin d'Argent]

And really. It just came to me. With my "screen name" being what it is I never should have allowed a bunny in the house in the first place.

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Or perhaps that is the attraction?

We have 5 (yes, five) house rabbits, all rescues, all considered difficult to adopt, and in one case (the little guy in my avatar) pretty much a lost cause. But the male and female bonded pair who live in the kitchen are now over 10 years old, and the sweetest couple imaginable. The two younger brothers upstairs that we picked up just before they went to a shelter settled down nicley after spaying and behave reasonably well in a large fenced in area in a spare bedroom, and get time to romp in other bedroooms (carefully supervised) in the evenings.

Rocky, in the photo, is a dwarf with a chinchilla colored coat, was mistreated while young, and was too feisty to even be handled by the farmer who raised rabbits at the farm where we adopted him from. Rocky had been dropped off by a woman who didn't like the way her boyfriend had been treating him, so she decided to keep the boyfriend and get rid of the rabbit. Rocky was about to be auctioned off the next day, probably to a pet store, where his chances of finding a knowledgeable and patient enough family were less than zip.

It took a good two years at least before he would consistently let us pet him, and he's still pretty shy. After more years of patient supervised playdates, we've only been able to get him to make friends with Chaplin, one of the two brothers -- he fights with everyone else. But he's a good little guy all the same, and very cuddly and sweet when he does settle down. He's not a bad bunny, just misunderstood.

All bunnies, like many dogs, are hell on wheels for their first two years, and then they settle down after that period of adolescence. That's why almost all strays are rescued when they are released in the wild -- with which they are completely incapable of coping -- at the age of about six months to one year.

Now to drag this back to something food-related: we don't eat rabbit generally, but certainly wouldn't hesitate to chow down if served it at someone's home. The only reason we don't order it in restaurants is the fear of being caught out if we came home with "rabbit breath."

Some day, when we have finally sent the last of our companions to their final rest, I do look forward to trying rabbit dishes -- although I'm not sure I could ever bring myself to preparing it myself. That might be a bit too, well, personal.

Good luck Karen -- it's never easy making these decisions about pets that are thrust upon you. But if the little guy pulls through, I wouldn't assume that the vet knows what he's talking about in terms of the bunnie's likely personality. With time, patience, and consistent care, it's been my experience that all bunnies, great and small, settle down into lovely, gentle and highly amusing companions.

Oh, and by the way -- almost none of them take to a harness.

- L.

[chromedome]

This is always a difficult thing (especially for those of us in North America, because of our silly habit of anthropomorphizing).

When I was a kid, my first acquaintance with rabbit came by way of my father's rabbit stew. We usually lived out in the boonies when I was young, and my father typically had snares set just a few hundred yards from the house. Kids being kids, I was always keen to help him skin out his catch (my dad was at sea a lot, and we didn't have a lot of bonding opportunities...); by the time I was seven or eight I could skin and portion a rabbit on my own (supervised but unassisted).

We did eventually get rabbits of our own to raise for meat. My sister and I immediately set about the task of naming them, as kids will. We settled on a name for the doe immediately (I don't remember it) and were pondering a name for the buck. My father, overhearing us, couldn't stop himself from suggesting "Stew." Since my best friend's name was Stu, I didn't think anything of it until about a week later, when the shoe finally dropped.

We did eventually eat both rabbits, and I don't recall feeling especially squeamish about it. Of course by then real life had intervened, and I'd seen "Stew" kill and chow down on a couple of his own children (Dad hadn't realized that the doe and infants needed to be sequestered), so I didn't have quite the same warm, fuzzy feelings for him that I might otherwise have had.

Later on, in my mid-teens, we lived on a small property in northern Newfoundland which my father was attempting to work as a subsistence farm. We grew our own root vegetables and potatoes and cabbages, and some beans and peas, and raised ducks and chickens and pigs. The only one we got a little bit sentimental about was a specific duck that had an odd and distinctive tuft of feathers at the back of his head. I'll confess to a twinge every time we ate duck that winter, but it wasn't enough to put me off eating...duck is one of my favourite things (it'll be on my menu year-round, if I have my way).

I guess I'm saying that I'm pretty pragmatic about food. When I asked my father how squirrels tasted, he took me out to shoot a few and we cooked them together (tasted like rabbit, actually, but it takes too damn many to make a decent stew). The natural life cycle for most animals ends abruptly by way of disease, predation, starvation, or accident; a quick and relatively painless death at the hands of a human is a better alternative than most (I'd rather face the axe than be chewed to death, if it came to that).

Please understand that I'm not being callous; I think it's a lot harder to properly value food if you've only ever bought it in plastic and styrofoam. I felt a real moment of recognition when reading Ruhlman's Soul of a Chef...remember the chapter where Thomas Keller talks about slaughtering his own rabbits? I don't know if he cooks any better for having done that, but it certainly reinforced his reverence for his ingredients.

[plk]

The thing is, several species of animals we eat also make good companion animals. Or pets, depending on how you look at it. Rabbits can and do make good companions, but for one born in poor conditions or not handled well, it can take more than a couple of months. It's not a matter of them being hard-coded in some way for food. Pigs can also make great companions and are no more unsuited for that life than are dogs. I think there's a convenience involved in claiming there's a real and natural difference between the animals we choose to keep as pets and the ones we choose to eat. In reality, we do eat animals that are capable of great companionship. I'm not saying it's wrong to eat rabbit -- I do it myself when I have the chance. But that the rabbit on your plate could easily have been somebody's pet, given the chance.

[cdh]

I don't know that I could agree that there are not hard-coded traits that affect the suitability of a particular beast for keeping as a pet. On PBS recently there was a fascinating documentary on the evolution of dogs from wolves. Click here for the show's webpage.

Anyway, they brought to light an experiment in breeding that selected for sociability, and demonstrated that within a couple of generations of selective breeding, the "flight distance" hard wired into an animal can be reduced or eliminated, though doing so also brings along another bunch of traits as well.

To select in breeding for "meaty" rather than "friendly" could have a huge impact on how the beastie copes with proximity to people, particularly if "meaty" is not one of the traits that comes bundled with "friendly".

[plk]

Wolves are also wild animals. I'm talking about domesticated animals and simply that animals commonly considered to be livestock often do make good pets.

[cdh]

Yes, and the foxes they started out with in the breeding experiment were fully wild as well. Yet a couple of generations of selected breeding led them to act domesticated.

And a couple of generations of random bunny breeding, or "meaty" bunny breeding could just as easily wipe out the short flight distance that made them domesticated... particularly if the meaty bunnies are housed in hutches and don't get the opportunity to express their built-in flight distance.

Edited April 29, 2007 by cdh (log)

[plk]

Okay, but you cannot tell just by a rabbit's temperment that it truly was intended for food. Animals vary in temperment even when they are bred under the same conditions. Relatedly, most puppies you see in pet stores were born under similar "livestock-like" conditions. In these usually large operations, the unsocialized parents stay in small cages most of their lives, producing many litters of animals that are sent out to be pets. So, I'm not seeing a big difference in how pets vs livestock are usually produced. Many animals that come out of these huge mills are also tempermentally and genetically unsound, but they're still defined as pets because of their breed.