Naughty Pets - Rabbits

The rabbits were definitely my idea - I wanted rabbits when I was a kid, but we always had cats, and following a particularly unfortunate spell with a school guinea pig called Hellraiser, pets of the small furry variety were discouraged from the house. So when we bought the house and got our hanky-sized garden, the Boy Wonder carpented (that may not be a word, but he did carpentry, so it should be) me a massive rabbit hutch (I can get into the top half, should I feel the need) and we toddled off to the local animal rescue centre and adopted two rabbits, sisters, one of whom has a massive afro. I was very excited so I learned as much as I could and bought them everything I thought they would need. They needed to be warm and have somewhere cosy to sleep, so I bought them one of those furry animal igloos to snuggle up in. They did look very cute when they sat in it, and fortunately I made the most of it because it wasn't long before their lovely fluffy bed was a pile of dirty, trodden down fabric scraps in their hutch. So I bought them another one, and that one lasted even less time. Then we had snow, and I walked home from the station in the snow (it was only a mile, but still!) worried that they would be too chilly in the garden, only to find that they had dragged the old top I had given them to keep warm down into the run where they had trampled it into the mud, and were happily sitting in the snow looking as though butter wouldn't melt in their tiny naughty mouths. So I gave up trying to make them warm and comfy and let them get on with their own agenda, which worked well because they showed little to no interest in me, preferring to enjoy their own company rather than come into the house where they would slide around on the floor boards and try to eat inappropriate things. Then they started digging. At first it was a hole in the corner of the run - I first noticed it as they chose to spread the soil that they had excavated all around the run, on top of the lovely grass with which we had lovingly provided them. But we stuck a brick down the hole, tried to scoop up as much soil as possible and put wire mesh underneath the end of the run. So they dug at the other end of the run, we filled in the hole and put more mesh down. They they dug in the 6 inch gap that I had not meshed because I felt mean, and we left them to it as they had already killed all the grass in the run and we had run out of bricks. Then one day the Boy Wonder went out into the garden and fell down a rabbit hole - they had dug a tunnel out of the run, round the front of the hutch and down the side. The tunnel didn't surface - they aren't trying to escape - until the Boy Wonder's whole foot disappeared into it. So we stuck a new-found brick down the hole and shook our heads at their persistence. The next day, the rabbits were sitting in the garden when the Boy Wonder went to leave for work, and he and our lovely next door neighbour had to shoo them back into their hutch. So we put a massive piece of concrete over the hole and since then they have spent most of their time in the sizable underground lair that they have constructed. It must be quite well appointed as every treat, toy and piece of hutch furniture I have ever given them has disappeared - there are currently about 4 feeding bowls, two wooden panels held together with wire designed to be used as a hidey-hole, several miscellaneous chew toys and a nifty little ball with holes in it that could be filled with treats which would then fall out when they pushed it around, all of which are underground in the lair. They would rather chew the wood that their very home is made from than any of the expensive, purpose-made items which I have bought them over the years, and although it took a while, I have now given up spending any money on things for them beyond food and bedding and trips to the pet shop often spark an internal battle between the part of me that still thinks they're misunderstood and the part of me that knows that anything I buy them will end up covered in mud, abandoned in a part of the lair they don't really use that much - maybe the utility room, or some other such decadent extension that they have down there. I assume that they are plotting evil, because plans for good could easily have been formulated from the comfort of their lovely fluffy bun-igloo and there is something about an underground lair which lends itself to the darker arts of planning to take over the world or plotting the downfall of a specific nemesis. That and doing what nature tells them to do by going underground and growing an unholy amount of fur over the winter. They know when the door opens that it's often feeding time, and will scuttle up to the top hutch for a snack as soon as I come out, but the rest of the time they remain resolutely in the Bun Cave, planning. They also, possibly in cahoots with the fish, spend a fair amount of time assuming positions that are strangely reminiscent of what a dead rabbit would look like. They have no qualms about arranging themselves in positions which simply cannot be comfortable, with their legs at odd angles and their heads lolling, only to leap into action as soon as I rush out in a panic, because by then they know I'll be so glad they're alive, I will spend hours hunting around for dandelion leaves and fresh grass to feed them. The more I think about it, the more likely it seems that our house is on some kind of ley-line which mostly affects animals in the vicinity, compelling them to undertake wildly complex and dangerous activities in the hope that their reign of terror will eventually lead to world domination. However the Boy Wonder insists that they just exhibit similar tendencies towards bloody-mindedness, willful disobedience and defiant naughtiness as I do, so maybe it's more a case of pets being like their owners.