Go to Esther's Column [Hip Hop Reporter
I]
I don't know if you've heard anything about this, but we're
just a few weeks away from a whole new millennium. I've heard
rumors about some kind of techno-bug that might be infecting a
lot of computers causing a few unpleasant symptoms.
I'm no bunny nerd or anything, but I like to keep on top of
important events. I'd heard some talk about this Y2K bug causing
a deadly computer epidemic with outbreaks of plane crashes, train
derailments, power failures, banks losing everyone's money and
panic in the streets.
Well, that's not good. But it's only the tip of the millennium
iceberg. I can hardly believe this myself, but this bug could
even stop farmers from getting their carrots and green veggies
and banana chips to the stores where my Mom can buy them! When
I heard that, I knew something had to be done about this evil
bug! I decided to do some digging into the facts.
Imagine my surprise when I discovered the entire disaster was
started by a few stingy programmers back at the dawn of computer
history who abbreviated dates to save a little cyberspace! What
could they have been thinking? Didn't they realize the risk they
exposed innocent millennium bunnies to?
Personally, I don't care much for dates. They seem to be nothing
but trouble with their insistent deadlines and irritating schedules
- and this is not just an excuse for my being late with this column
(I'm saving that excuse for my next column when I plan to come
down with the millennium bug). My point is, I'll be really annoyed
if my carrots stop appearing in my breakfast dish every morning
because some foolish programmers misinformed their computers about
which century we are in. It's just not fair! And the timing just
couldn't be worse! If the bug hit during the spring or summer,
we could just step outside and munch on grass and dandelions until
it all blew over. But noooooooo, the computers have to get sick
in the middle of winter when Eve and I would rather just snuggle
together in our cosy box and wait for room service.
Obviously something has to be done, and here's what we plan
to do. First, we plan to bug (no millennium pun intended) our
Mom to stock up on our favorite dried rabbit foods - and I'd advise
you to do the same with your humans (dried cat, dog, or other,
depending on your species preferences, of course). It's not too
soon to start your food hoarding campaign, especially if you like
to eat as much as Eve does (ha, ha!).
Next, we will be subtly reminding Mom to do her grocery shopping
for us regularly and well before our carrot and veggy supplies
run low. It's important to start encouraging good food supply
planning habits in your humans as soon as possible so they can
avoid the last minute rush to the grocery stores on New Year's
eve to grab whatever is left for their little furry companions.
Finally, once you've got everything running like clockwork,
you can relax and enjoy the end-of-the-millennium panic knowing
your food supplies are secure. And if it turns out the whole Y2K
thing was just a big hoax perpetrated by some bored computers
who craved a little upgrading to revitalize their hard drives,
at least you'll have plenty of tasty treats on hand to welcome
in the new year!
Hoppy holidays!
Lilith Bunny
Hip Hop Reporter
It's a little known fact, but rabbits love a bit of change
now and then - a little excitement in our otherwise placid lifestyle.
I'm not talking about total chaos, of course. We like to know
where our next carrot's coming from and when it will be arriving.
First thing in the morning is a good time. And we wouldn't care
to find our trusty carton hideouts suddenly up and disappear on
us or the sun forget to show up at its scheduled time in our special
sunny spot in the guestroom, either. Some rabbit habits are very
enjoyable. It's just that too much routine can leave us bunnies
feeling sort of bored.
That's why Eve and I encouraged Mom to shake things up a bit
with some remodeling of our office this year. Sure we liked the
plush wall-to-wall carpeting, even if it was a kind of grungy
gray. And we never complained about the arrangement of the bookcases
and shelves where we hid behind the books and papers or the cabinets
we occasionally chewed on or the desks we napped under. We never
took much note of the dreary gray walls except to avoid crashing
into them on our nightly chases 'round the room or early morning
romps.
But our ears certainly perked up with renewed interest a few
months ago when we heard some strange noises coming from the office
and rushed up to discover that several pieces of the furniture
had moved! Intriguing corners we'd never been able to explore
were suddenly fully exposed! Even more fascinating, every time
we left for a while, more and more of the furniture would move
about, clustering in center of the room one day, then scattering
off to various corners the next.
Life had become a whole new game! Every visit to the office
was a new adventure, requiring several laps around the room and
careful exploration of all the new terrain and unexpected nooks
and crannies. And still, the very next visit everything was different
again!
But that's just the tip of the iceberg. There were strange
new smells, too, as the walls began to change color and the rug
was replaced, bit by bit, by a slippery wooden floor!
It was an exciting time, but not all good. Eve rebelled against
the sleek new floor and refused to set paw in the office for several
days. When Mom brought in some new rugs to put on top of the slippery
surface, she finally relented and decided the new rugs were quite
acceptable replacements for her beloved carpeting.
And I didn't like it much when I stepped in some nasty, sticky stuff Mom was using to hold the wood tiles down with. Mom screamed and tried to clean it off me, but it got all stuck in my nice soft fur and tasted very bad when I tried to pull it off. For a while, even I was almost ready to join Eve in yearning for the good old days when every day was just like the day before. Almost.
But then a cool new bunny playhouse appeared in the middle
of the floor, with a carpeted ramp to the second floor balcony
where we could snuggle up and enjoy a bird's eye view of the office.
And then we discovered that our favorite tunnels made of carpet
remnants had returned in a much better spot for playing. And,
after a couple days of horrible noise and awful dust all over
everything, we suddenly discovered there was an entirely new doorway
where there used to be a wall. Now, instead of just chasing each
other back and forth, we could chase each other around in a big
circle - through one door into the front room then through the
other door into the back room and start all over again!! Or we
could sneak up behind Mom when she thought we were in the room
in front of her. The possibilities were endless!
Of course, change can't go on forever. Things are a lot calmer
again now, and the furniture hardly ever moves around when we're
not looking. Each day most things are where they were the day
before and no new sounds or strange smells have invaded our quiet
office for some time. We enjoy the new playhouse, the new places
to hide and some new cozy spots to stretch out in. Running in
circles has become a pleasant but predictable routine. We're quite
happy with our office renovation; even Eve only reminisces fondly
about the old carpeting occasionally.
Still, our ears always perk up with a little tingle of excitement whenever we here the sound of moving furniture!
Lilith Bunny
It's not true that Lilith is the only literate bunny on the
Paw Prints' staff! I've just been preoccupied with more important
things than writing a column - like grabbing the tastiest carrots
and best selection of dried fruits while Lilith is engaged in
her "artistic" pursuits. As the dominant bunny in my
sibling group, it's my duty to play the bully, and that just doesn't
leave much time for diary-keeping and such.
But I can't leave all my fan mail unanswered any longer. A
lot of the letters were like this one from Jack Rabbit of Phoenix,
Arizona:
I'm surprised a fine-looking rabbit like yourself would let
her little sister do all the talking for her! What's the problem?
Cat got your tongue?
How insulting!! As though any mere kitty cat could get close
enough to me to swipe my tongue, which, in fact, is still exactly
where it belongs and working quite well, thank you very much!
As anybunny knows, we don's use our tongues to do our talking
anyway. We talk with our ears and our trusty lucky feet. And when
we need to communicate more formally, we use mental telepathy
to send our message to our mom, who transcribes it into these
words that you're reading now.
Our tongues are put to use for more important tasks like eating
and grooming, both of which I excel at!
Here's another rude letter from a New Hampshire bunny named
Bitsy:
I've seen pictures on your web page of Lilith browsing through
the library shelves and nibbling on some of her favorite volumes.
But you never seem to bother with books. Don't you read?
Of course I read, when I find something worth reading - like an
interesting new recipe for raw veggies or dried fruit that needs
to be brought to Mom's attention. And no, I don't avoid the library
shelves because I'm too fat to squeeze between the books and the
wall, like Lilith, as some smartalecks have suggested! That's
mostly my luxuriously thick fur coat that some less well-endowed
bunnies are jealous of, and besides the more discriminating bunnies
find a little extra padding to be quite attractive!
But, more to the point, Lilith only pretends to be meditating
and absorbing knowledge and wisdom from the books. She's really
just napping most of the time, and occasionally she nibbles some
of the book covers - what's so intelligent about that?
To tell the truth, I've eaten just as many book covers - and
some pages too - as Lilith, and I'm sure I've digested as much
knowledge and wisdom as anybunny. Maybe I don't flaunt it like
Lilith, with her literary airs, but I'm really quite the intellectual.
I just prefer a good meal and an afternoon nap in the sun.
Eve Bunny
Hip Hop Supervisor
Well I can hardly believe it's been a whole year since Eve and I moved into our permanent home here at the Paw Prints Post headquarters! It seems like only yesterday we were packing ourselves into a cosy little bunny carrier and biding farewell to all our pals at the Chadds Ford rabbit rescue center.
Since then we haven't spent much time reminiscing about the past - our schedules are just too packed with important activities like eating, napping, exploring, gnawing on furniture and playing. But last month Mom went back to our alma mater for a special Open House and returned with lots of news, some cute bunny photos, and a pair of lovely straw hats for both of us! Mom seems to think we should put them on our heads (humans are so weird), but Eve and I knew instinctively that straw hats make excellent toss toys and are quite tasty as well.
The big news from the rescue center was that our photo came in second in the cute bunny photo contest (can you believe there was a bunny cuter than US?!?!) and all the winning bunnies are featured in a special 1999 bunny calendar. What a perfect way to celebrate the Year of the Rabbit!!
Naturally, we're all donating our profits from the calendar to help out rescue center bunnies who haven't found nice homes yet. Not that we don't have fond memories of the nice volunteers at the Center, but everybunny dreams of someday having a home of their own with human companions they don't have to share.
Since our days at the Center, Eve and I have accomplished a lot in one year. We've redecorated Mom's office with tastefully nibbled papers and boxes and added a rolled up rug remnant in one corner which doubles as a tunnel to run through and a small mound for getting a better view of the landscape. In the library - my special room - I spend a good bit of my days studying and meditating. You can learn a lot from books, plus the space between the wall and the back of the books on the lower shelves is a wonderful hideout. Just the other day I was taking a break from my morning exercise with Eve when I came across the House Rabbit Handbook! As I nibbled on the pages I noticed there was all kinds of valuable information in there to help Mom make our lives more comfortable. Fortunately, with all my experience, I had the presence of mind to push that book off the shelf onto the floor, where Mom would find it and read it. Then I selected a less valuable book on dog care to snack on.
I'm learning new things every day!
Lilith Bunny
We got an interesting package in the mail a few weeks ago. Eve and I were stretched out in a cool spot when Mom opened the box and pulled out a book with a couple of cute bunnies on the cover. Not as cute as us, of course, but they were friendly looking and unusually fluffy.
The bunny who wrote the book (she apparently dictated the story to her human just like I do) explained that she was an angora rabbit - that's why her hair was so long and silky. Mom read us the story which was all about Chandon's adventures as an employee at the Little Fur Factory. She and her fellow housebunnies made scarves and sweaters out of their long, silky fur! Well, they actually just donated the fur to their Mom who spun the silky strands and knitted them into nice toasty-warm things for people to wear.
As compensation, the worker buns got lots of hay and tasty veggies, a very roomy house to hop around in, and daily grooming sessions with their human. Not a bad deal, really, when you consider that they'd just be shedding the excess fur anyway.
Eve and I generally use our loose fur to create lovely "dust bunnies" that float elegantly around the house and huddle in flocks under the furniture. Who'd have thought that some imaginative hares would have used their unwanted fur as an entree into the glamorous fashion industry!? I, for one, had no idea that some bunnies were so concerned about deprived, furless humans they found this creative way to donate their very own second-hand fur to product luxurious bunny-soft garments.
In our research, Eve and I have found lots of fellow buns on the Internet, many of whom maintain web pages, keep diaries, and related fascinating tales of their exciting lives. The literary profession has always been popular among the lapine race. Some literary bunnies are almost as cleaver as me!
Opportunities for house bunnies are also growing by leaps
and bounds (ha, ha! - a bunny joke!), and today it's not unusual for ambitious rabbits to supervise home offices and the more traditional schoolroom for the academic types. Another expanding field for rabbits is therapy work. Dogs still get most of the attention as therapy pets, but rabbits with the right credentials (a pleasant, outgoing, calm personality), can always find rewarding work.
There's simply no limits on the talents and accomplishments of our kind these day! Eve and I took our very first Labor Day off to celebrate and review our own careers as house rabbits and editorial bunnies. Keeping up our web page, writing my column, doing amusing and sometimes mischievous things, looking adorable for spontaneous photo ops, and being soft and cuddly 24 hours a day is demanding but very rewarding work. Sometimes Eve and I can barely fit in 15 hours of sleeptime in our hectic days!! Frankly, I don't know how our predecessor, Esther, ever managed to handle the whole job alone!
Lilith Bunny
A few weeks ago the thermometer in our home office hit 90 degrees . . . and kept on going! Eve and I took off for cooler territory. But Mom continued playing with her computer. Apparently she didn't notice she was slowly melting in the heat.
Sometimes I wonder how humans ever made it to the top of the food chain. They're not nearly as smart as us bunnies!
Nobunny has to tell us that the best thing to do when it gets really hot is to stretch yourself out on something cool and take a refreshing nap. We automatically shed our winter coats in the summer and then grow them right back when the winter weather returns. We're always in fashion and it doesn't cost us a penny!
We nibble our greens and carrots and nutritious pellets when we're hungry and sip our water when we're thirsty and sleep when we're tired. Wild bunnies, like the cottontail family who live in our backyard, even make a tasty meal out of the healthy crop of weeds Mom's been cultivating back there. They never get an outrageous bill to pay after they've dined out. They never worry about meeting the mortgage payments on their little patch of meadow. They don't work too hard to be able to enjoy life's little pleasures - like stretching out in some tall grass and listening to the birds chirping.
It's true, Eve and I are home office rabbits - well I am at least - Eve prefers a life of leisure. But I've found that I can perform most of my work in my head, while I'm napping, eating, and playing. Fortunately, on a hot day like today, with that nasty thermometer creeping above 90 again, I'm able to transmit my column to Mom telepathically. She can sit in the sweltering office and type it up on the computer. Not that I'm heartless, but Mom is up there anyway - she might just as well be doing my work while she's at it.
See? It's like I said, we bunnies are way smarter than humans.
Dictated by Lilith Bunny
Eve and I had just emerged from our cozy, customized cardboard bungalow and were stretching and preparing to inspect our food dishes to see what was on the menu for the day. Eve groomed my face and neck, then chased me around the room for a few minutes - it was a perfectly ordinary Saturday morning.
Or so I thought, but Eve noticed something was different today. The hallway was covered with newspaper, for one thing. Usually, there's just a rug out there. Something was certainly up.
"I think Mom went a little overboard when she cleaned up our room," I laughed. "She put newspaper all over the house instead of just our cage!"
Eve had a more sinister interpretation. "There may be new bunnies in the house. Where ever you find newspaper on the floor, there's sure to be bunnies nearby. It could be a hostile takeover!"
We were prepared for the worst when we poked our noses out to take a quick sniff. There was definitely a strong odor, but it wasn't hostile bunnies. It was paint! And there was Mom, on top of a ladder, trying to paint the hall ceiling.
What fun! Eve and I plunged into the project with great enthusiasm. We hopped around the ladder, ripped up papers and rearranged them, and dodged the splattering paint. I tried to make a pawprint design on the wall, but the paint was already dry where I could reach.
Mom kept telling us to go back in our room so we wouldn't get splattered, but I thought the lilac color would look quite stylish and springlike in my coat. I did my best to stand right under the paint brush, but Mom kept moving it out or my way. I guess she wanted all the paint to drip on her.
Eve thought Mom was much too far off the ground to be safe. Out of concern, she tested the ladder by butting it really hard with her head several times and jumping up against the legs with all her (considerable) weight. The ladder wobbled a bit, but it didn't fall over though Mom had to grab the top and yelled at Eve to "knock it off." I think that's what she was trying to do, 'cause she looked pretty disappointed when Mom held on.
A few minutes later, Mom came down the ladder and chased Eve into the guestroom. We both decided to settle under the bed for a short afternoon nap.
Painting was fun for awhile. But all that hard work really wore us out.
Lilith Bunny
Say somebunny had a really bad night. Maybe everytime she got snug and cozy in her special box - which she'd spent hours gnawing into just the right shape with nice front and side doors and everything - when her pesky sister showed up and nudged her out of the best spot! Naturally, this hypothetical bunny could never get back into her peaceful slumber for the rest of the night! She might very well wake up the next morning in a cranky mood.
Not that this ever happened to me, of course - this is all purely hypothetical.
But if somebunny did wake up feeling ornery after a bad night, she just might do something out of keeping with her normal pleasant personality. Like, oh, for instance, eating a large hole in the office rug . . . not that this ever happened to me, but I can imagine in this hypothetical situation I, . . . that is, "she" just might do that. Accidentally. While she was ripping the carpeting up in some dark secluded corner of the room, maybe. I'm just guessing here.
Or she might - again, just accidentally - nip her big bully sister in the butt when she wasn't looking, causing her sister (let's call her "Eve") to suddenly lurch forward in surprise knocking the food dish over and scattering the nice fresh pellets Mom had just filled it with all over the floor. This might make a lot of noise. And the wild chase that follows this hypothetical incident would probably make even more noise, with rabbit nails slashing across hard wood floors trying to find some traction, cardboard boxes propelled across rooms, and soft bunny bodies thumping into an interesting variety of objects - that sort of thing. This could be disturbing to Mom who, hypothetically, might be trying hard to concentrate on an important job that has to be finished by the end of the day.
It's possible that this noise could be quite distracting. Mom might even leave her computer where she's completing her hypothetical job to track down the culprits and suggest they find some quieter activity. But - and this is still only hypothetical - the sibling rabbits might already have made their peace and turned to a more sedentary project like, oh, let's just say nibbling on some books they found lying around on the bookshelf. These books might be expensive reference books that Mom needs for her work - assuming she was careless enough to put them on one of the lower shelves. Theoretically, Mom might be really annoyed when she discovers this new activity.
Not that this ever happened to me, but in this hypothetical case, could the bunny who'd woken up out of sorts - let's call her "Lilith" - be blamed? I say "no." Everybunny has a bad hare day sometimes. Even I might misbehave under exceptional circumstances like these - hypothetically.
Lilith Bunny
It's hard to believe, but just a few short months ago we were abandoned bunnies! Homeless! Nobunny wanted us!
Eve says we shouldn't take it personally. It happens to lots of perfectly lovable animals. Eve's my sister - my big sister, although we're the same age, which is probably about 8 (human) months old. Being the dominant bun, she tended to eat the lion's share of the food, so to speak. I'm Lilith. I guess you might say I'm the runt of the litter. I prefer to think of myself as keeping in good hopping form. If you ask me, Eve could afford to shed a few ounces.
But back to my story. Someone took us in to the Chester Count SPCA where we had to live in a very noisy kennel full of barking dogs and crying cats. It was kind of scary. I was really glad when a rabbit rescuer came to take us to her nice rabbit rescue center in Chadd's Ford. She had dogs and cats, too, but they lived in her house and never came into the bunny quarters where we stayed in our own private cage . . . along with about 50 rabbits and a few guinea pigs.
People came in to feed us and clean everybunny's cages, and they always talked to us and socialized. It was a very nice place, but I was afraid, with so many bunnies to choose from, no one would ever come for us. You'd be amazed at how many sizes, shapes, and different colors and styles of ears and fur we come in, and they were all there at the rabbit rescue center!
In those days Eve and I were going by the code names of Prairie and Meadow. We were just about the smallest hoppers on the premises and, compared to some of our flashier, more outgoing neighbors, very shy and retiring. I was convinced it wasn't going to be easy for us to find a new home under the circumstances.
But what I didn't know then was that our rescuer belonged to a wonderful organization called the House Rabbit Society (HRS), with chapters of rabbit lovers all over the country. And they had some really cool webpages where they put photos of rabbits up for adoption. Thousands of humans looking for the perfect bunnies to take charge of their homes could visit the HRS webpage and look at the pictures. Out photos and bios were in a special section of "bonded pairs" because we didn't want to go to different homes.
After a short trip to the vet for a little "operation" Eve and I were ready to begin interviewing prospective human companions. And sure enough, someone saw us on the webpage and called up the rescue center to ask if we were still there. When she came down to meet us Eve and I knew right off it was a good match. After a little "bonding" time, we packed ourselves into the comfy traveling case our new Mom had brought for us and were ready to "go home."
That was about 6 weeks ago, but Eve and I are always finding new things to nibble, shred, and explore around here. While grazing through the library shelves, I discovered Esther Bunny's diaries and collected works (under the Hip Hop Reporter pseudonym) and decided to take over her editorial position [I haven't gotten a good photo to use for my masthead yet]. Eve is still "considering her options." I believe she's leaning toward a career as couch potato.
Lilith Bunny
Hip Hop Reporter II
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