R. I. P. Peter Rabbit
Well our newest addition to the family has gone! This rabbit was very nice and after 6 weeks the kids were just getting used to having him around and getting confident with lifting him in and out of his hutch. And visiting children were all enjoying seeing the rabbit and stroking his soft fur… blub blub. And they were all being really careful about not leaving the doors open, and the baby liked watching him and even I, a pragmatic pet-o-phobe on grounds of extra unnecessary work, was enjoying having him around! But the large fox we’ve seen skulking through the bushes at the end of the garden managed to undo the door catches last night, and no more baby rabbit.
And we’ve all spent the day feeling very bad about this, and very sad for the poor rabbit as a familiar theme from cosy bedtime ‘FastFox’ stories has become a gory reality in front of our eyes! And we’ve got no Slow Dog and today all supposedly ‘foxproof’ rabbit hutch designs we could find on the internet seem to have matching discussion threads of people with reports to the contrary! So we’ve all been quite deflated – will the kids have to give up on the idea of a rabbit?
But I am not going to see my kids defeated on this one, and as I was planning how I would somehow build the ultimate foxproof rabbit hutch with my son and I will not let this fox foil their hopes of pets, it occured that assuming the fox isn’t skilled with screwdrivers or saws, all we need to do is make sure the fastenings on the doors are able to be opened by the kids but not the fox. This way should be a lot cheaper than a different hutch, or a shed to keep the hutch in. SO current thinking is padlocks; probably key and number code versions for good measure. And as long as the kids can keep a secret, and don’t tell the fox the code accidently……. !
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