Bunnies Molt So They Can Steal Your Food

So, I’ve half-wittedly discovered that rabbits molt. This means that every once in a while, you start noticing something.

There’s more hair in your hand after you pet them.

They’re furrier than normal.

And a little more bald than normal.

There’s more fur in the air.

And on your face. In your eyelashes. Up your nose.

You have to open your window and take the screen off to lure the fur outside. Sometimes this doesn’t work. Especially when it’s 6 degrees outside and you can literally see the heat escaping out into the ether.

This can go on for weeks. And no amount of daily brushing helps.

One day, it all comes to a head and you suddenly realize why rabbits molt. Not to shed their excess fur. Not to grow a new coat.

But to steal your effing FOOD.

You’re sitting down. Gently petting your rabbit. You raise that apple you’re crunching on to your mouth and take a bite. And then you’re suddenly hit with that vomit-inducing feeling in your mouth when you feel some kind of hair transfer from your food and into the tight space between your teeth. You notice a couple locations of this. You make a face and try to spit out the food into a tissue.

Until you realize, all too late, that there is FUR IN THE TISSUE. IN EVERY TISSUE. WHEN A NEW TISSUE EMERGES INTO THE AIR, IT COMES INTO CONTACT WITH BUNNY FUR AND IS THUS CONTAMINATED.

Again, you don’t realize this… until you are wiping your face with the FUR TISSUES. OH, GOD!

You look at your apple, cradled in its paper towel you used to dry it off and act as a barrier against the sticky juice apples leak onto your hand when you crunch it.

That wet paper towel is now a FUR TOWEL.

You pray it isn’t so as you look at your red, juicey, delicious apple.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And suddenly you look down in horror as, this whole time you’ve been petting Fluffy, you’ve been sending Fluffy’s fur SPIRALLING into the air, on your face, on your tissues, on your fingers, ON YOUR APPLE.

And he looks up at you. And then he nudges your apple. Which has already lost its value in your eyes. And then you let him finish the rest of the untouchable apple, save for the seeds and core.

That’s when you realize.

This was his plan all along.

Introducing: WTF Google? of the Week!

I’m sure you’ve already discovered the mine of hilarity that ensures when you begin to type a query into Google’s search engine. It will provide a list of popular suggestions to finish your thought for you. Often, these suggestions are… well, off the mark.

I’ve come across too many of these gems to just let them fall by the wayside anymore and so we have WTF Google? of the Week!

You’re welcome.

Self-Portrait

. . . of my rabbit, Sheldon.

And also, in the style of one of my very favorite blogs, Hyperbole and a Half, of me!

And last, a cartoon I drew of the first thing I thought of after reading an article about Connecticut potentially adopting a nickel tax on plastic bags. The quote that started it all came out of Senator Edward Meyer’s mouth, “[P]lastic bags … are really hostile to a good environment.”

PS- I’m a total copycat, and after half-assing my way through drawing my doofus self-portrait as well as Sheldon, I am currently working on a cartoon of an episode BunnyBunny and I shared a few nights ago. It might take a while.

A Post In Which My Lies Lead to Cuteness

I often have to leave at random times on random days to go to work. Sometimes I’m gone overnight. It’s the nature of my job as a pet-sitter.

Sometimes when I have to leave more than once or twice a day for a job, my kid gets sad. Understandable and heart-wrenching but Mommy’s gotta do what Mommy’s gotta do to support The Child’s fruit snack addiction.

When I had to leave a few days ago I went to kiss Luke goodbye. He pouted, but luckily I realized I have The Season on my side. I told him Mommy had to go back to work but that afterwards I was meeting with Santa to consult with him and see what he’d collected for The Child’s hoard under the tree. Am I a big, fat, dirty liar? Yes. Am I likely to get hate mail for this? Probably. But wait, before you do, read what Luke said to me after.

He looked down at the cover of his kids’ magazine, pointed to the drawing of a clutch of children playing on a Safari-themed floor puzzle. He looked up at me with his pouty, big blue eyes.

“Tell Santa I want. Pweeease?”

That sound was your heart breaking and melting.

I promised him I’d tell Santa and thanked every lucky star I have that my aunt had *just* told me she was buying him a floor puzzle *literally* the day before.

Bunny Thievery and Blind Dinners

There are many different ways rabbits communicate using body language. They can express themselves quite clearly if you pay attention. You can learn more in-depth bunny language here at Language of the Lagomorphs. Today’s topic that I’d like to expand on is “thumping”. This is where the rabbit lifts up both back feet and THOMPS the ground beneath it. Typically, this is shown to express a warning to other family members of impending death and destruction or to get your attention.

Today, however, I learned that it can mean… something else.

Over the weekend, my sweet innocent bunny decided to chew up a pair of slippers and dig out and EAT that transparent dryer sheet material under my bed. This is not only an annoyance but it CAN be pretty darn dangerous to a rabbit. So, my feeble mind tried coming up with ways to keep a certain flop-eared wood chipper out from under my bed. I blockaded the two side entrances to my bed with a trash can and an up-turned laundry basket weighted down with my purse.

First Sheldon tried the trash can side, with me there to prevent him from tipping it over and eating the garbage inside. He quickly gave this up and scurried around the other side to check the laundry basket. No dice. Suddenly I hear “THOMP!” and I can only snicker as I watch my rabbit look about in confusion, frustration and then anger. I got up and went to pat-pat console him. He only stood this a moment before taking off to the other side of the bed.

“I will figure you out, basket.”

 Needless to say, the trash can was up-ended and all the garbage was pulled out and strewn across the room.

In a matter of one minute. WHILE I was on the other side of the room blocking the opposite entrance.

Upon suddenly hearing that tell-tale rustling, I instantly knew that plan had been foiled. I freaking ninja-rolled over my bed to put an end to the trash shenanigans only to find My Sweet scampering away with a piece of discarded, shredded newspaper (another of his doings).

After putting the trash back in the can and uprighting the can, I suddenly heard my keys jangling. And a sort of ripping sound. I knew this could only end in tragedy.

I was right.

There was my bunny, pulling my purse off the laundry-basket by my attached keys. As I snatched my purse back and replaced the failed block-out to its original position, I could only watch in amusement as this naughty little bunny jumped in the air in fits of joy over and over again (Read: “Binky”)

Naturally, he scuttled right back under the bed and peered out at me inches out of my reach. Because he knows. Of course he knows. He’s the wee-nar.

And speaking of winning and losing, tonight I decided to try two new recipes: one dinner and one dessert.

Tonight I made a honey garlic chicken for dinner and crockpot apple brown betty for dessert. Seeing as how the betty was going to be stewing in the crockpot for 4-5 hours, I figrued I’d get that cooking as soon as I got home from work.

Crockpot Apple Brown Betty
Ingredients:
3 lbs cooking apples
10 slices bread, cubed (about 4 cups)
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/8 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup butter or 1/2 cup margarine, melted

Directions:
1 Wash apples, peel, core, and cut into eights.
2 Place in bottom on crock.
3 Combine bread cubes, cinnamon, nutmeg, salt, sugar, butter and toss together.
4 Place on top of apples in crock.
5 Cover.
6 Cook on low setting 2-4 hours.
7 Check apples about halfway into this — if not softening enough, add water or apple juice to steam inside the pot. Half to three quarters of a cup is usually sufficient.

This I had to switch up a little. I wasn’t exactly sure what “cubed” bread was. Seriously, no, I was having a complete brain-dead moment. So I tore the slices up into quarters. Because that makes the most sense. (It dawned on me later what cubed means.) I also squished up the quartered bread pieces into those little gobs you would pelt a duck with. Or politely offer. Whatever you do to feed ducks.

I DID cube the butter to melt it though!

Aren’t I so very Martha?

What I also did to tweak that betty recipe was I definitely didn’t peel the apples because my peeler has gone AWOL. And I’ve never peeled an apple before. Potatoes, carrots, yes. Apples, no. And the slices were more like 10 per apple instead of 8 because that’s what my apple wedger dictates. So the recipe can kiss my short-cut loving ass.

About 3 hours in, this is what the betty looked like:

Nasty looking, right?

Well, since that was simmering in the pot, I next tried Honey Garlic Chicken for dinner. The recipe is as follows:

Ingredients:

6 bone-in chicken pieces, such as breasts, legs or thighs
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 tsp dry mustard
4 minced garlic cloves
2 tbsp soy sauce
1/2 to 3/4 cup liquid honey

And the Directions:

1.Preheat oven to 350F . Remove skin from chicken, only if you wish. Place chicken skin-side down in a 9×13-inch  baking dish or other dish with high sides that will snugly hold chicken. A high-sided dish is essential as sauce bubbles up considerably during baking.
2.Evenly distribute remaining ingredients over top of chicken in the order in which they appear, ending with honey. Do not mix.
3.Bake, uncovered, in center of 350F  oven for 1 hour, turning chicken pieces every 15 minutes. Lift chicken from juices. Skim off and discard fat from juices and serve as a dipping sauce with chicken.

I had to change the recipe just a bit as well. For starters, I only have regular old yellow mustard. And I am way too lazy to dehusk and mince garlic so I have a nice, big jar of pre-minched garlic sitting in the fridge at all times. And I used chicken cutlets. Because I just happened to have it. And I hate chicken with bones in it.

For the actual cooking, I have to say that the dish was looking pretty… disgusting, to say the least.

Yeah.

So anyway, once the oven reached 350, I popped that horrifying beast in.

I was scared. I had two ugly dishes baking with faces only a mother could love. I could only pray and hope that they would come out as good as they at least smelled.

Dinner time came. I reached in to pull out the chicken and was… so pleasantly surprised.

See? Table is set and everything.

The chicken came out great! It was tasty, moist and not gross at all. I think I may try breading it next time, just to try.

Speaking of bread. Here’s how betty did.

Isn’t she stunning? The ugly duckling, I tell ya! PSSST. The ice cream was totally my idea.

The only fault I found in betty… was the bread. Can I just say, “Ew”. It turned to sludge and wasn’t very tasty to begin with. Nasty, nasty, nasty. Next time, I’ll stew the apples and all the rest, but that bread is staying in the bag.

This concludes today’s post! Hope you were as amused, squee-ed and disgusted as I was 🙂

Final note: I discovered some of my offspring’s minions hiding in Sheldon’s apartment / cardboard box.

Woody sez: NYEH-HEH-HEH-HEH-HEH!!!!!

Hello world!

First post! Let me start it by saying that the stars of this blog are as follows:

Sheldon: Lovable, fluffy, smooshy, adorable, cantankerous, easily offended bunny with a constant case of the munchies.

Luke: Also lovable, not as smooshy or fluffy, adorable especially when cranky which is typical, unintentionally too funny offspring of blog author.

Michelle: Lovable, fluffy, smooshy, adorable, funny, only sometimes cranky blog author.

Boyfriend: Rick. Teddy bear when relaxed but grizzly bear when enraged.

Mom: Mom. Saint of Saints.

Dad: Dad. Provider and teller of the best deadpan jokes you’ll ever hear.