Honey I Blew up the Bunny

It's starting to become a running joke amongst our family and friends that we own a petting zoo.  Which is weird to me, because I honestly don't feel like we have a bunch of animals.  In fact, when you first walk into our house, you're pretty much greeted with a nice, relatively clean home with very little evidence of pets.  But if you start a deeper exploration, you'll eventually find:  Two dogs, three cats, two rats, one desert tortoise, one tarantula, one lizard, one sheep, and a pond full of fish.  This list doesn't include the intermittent bugs that Trinity raises, such as the two June bugs we housed last month, the basket full of praying mantises, and the tank full of slugs.  Yeah, I guess we have a few pets.  So I guess it shouldn't come to any kind of surprise that we picked up one more this weekend.

It all started a few weeks ago, when Trinity was reading her Kids National Geographic magazine, and she showed me a picture similar to this one:

Initially I thought that this must be some record-breaking freak-of-nature bunny.  But as I read the article, I discovered that this is just a normal breed of domesticated rabbit.  The rabbit above is called a "Flemish Giant," and they are ALL this big (google it and you'll see what I'm talking about).  For me, it was love at first sight.  I did some research and learned that they are very easy-going, lovable pets, and easily litter-box trained (never mind the fact that their litter box is the size of a car).  After extensive research, I decided I had to have one.  The logical side of me was screaming out "No, no, BAD idea!  What are you going to do with a giant rabbit?  You already have too many pets!"  But the child in me told it "Shut up, I'm getting that bunny."

So for the last few weeks, Clint and I have been on the hunt for a Flemish Giant.  As you can imagine, they are not easy to find.  We were thinking that we might even have to drive out of state to get one.  But then Clint's sister called us yesterday with the news that an online listing for two six-week-old does had suddenly showed up in Glendora.  We of course drove down there, and the rest is history.  Here's our new bunny (she's the one on the left):

  

She rode on Elijah's lap all the way home.  You can see that at six weeks old, she's already almost the size of a full-grown rabbit.  

When we got back up to the desert, we realized we had no supplies for a rabbit.  The pet stores were already closed, so we swung by K-Mart.  Having nowhere to put her, I took her right into the store with me.  It's a pretty cool social experiment to walk into K-Mart with a rabbit in your arms.  Most people were mildly curious about her (including the workers), but for the most part, didn't act overly surprised or concerned.

We don't have a cage for her yet, but she's already doing such a great job using her litter box, I don't think we'll ever bother with one.  Plus imagine the size of cage it would take to house her once she's full grown!  I took her to my mother-in-law's house this afternoon, and she rode right on my lap while I was driving.  She is such an adorable, sweet and docile little thing.  The only downfall is I don't care for her name.  I wanted to name her either Sunkist or Tabitha, but the kids and Clint voted on "Pumpkin."  I think Pumpkin is adorable, but I have reasons for not wanting it for our rabbit.  Unfortunately I was out-voted, so Pumpkin it is.  I'll be sure to post another update in eight months when I'm pulling my hair out because a monstrous Pumpkin is chewing up my laptop cords and terrorizing my house.

As far as rationalizing yet another pet, I'll just close with a quote I heard recently on How I Met Your Mother.  

"Some mistakes you just have to make."