Tuesday, March 22, 2011

True or False?

So I was grooming Storm, one of my french angora bunnies, last weekend and she looked fine.  Great.  I even plucked her a little bit to get some of the loose fluff out and she was looking fantastic.  Naturally, to Storm, having things going well means that it's time to create havoc. 

When I went outside a few days ago I noticed that she had a couple of bald patches.  And by a couple, I mean that her entire stomach and parts of her legs were naked.  Trying to figure out where all the fluff was going (and fearing she had eaten it, yikes!) I peeked into the covered part of the hutch.  And my rabbit was building a nest.

Now, she's only housed with her sister and has never, to my knowledge, even seen a male rabbit so this nesting thing took me by surprise.  After a frantic consult with the angora rabbit group on Ravelry, I learned that some female rabbits can apparently go through a false pregnancy, where they build nests by pulling out their fluff and adding it to hay to prepare for the baby rabbits.  Which will not be coming.  We have no idea WHY she thinks she's pregnant, but knowing that she's not the brightest carrot in the bunch and that her sister Nimbus is a bit of a brat, Adam envisioned the conversation went something like this:

Storm having just eaten a very large carrot.
Nim:  Wow.  You're getting pretty fat.  Are you pregnant?!
Storm:  Hmm, I don't know...
Nim:  I bet you're pregnant.  Yep, definitely pregnant.  You need to build a nest.
Storm:  A nest?  Really?
Nim:  Yeah, you need to pull out all of your fur and build a nest.  I mean ALL of it.  You don't want those babies to get cold.
Storm:  All my fur?  But it's March!  And it's cold!  Can't I use some of your fur?
Nim:  Well, no.  I need my fur.  And besides, YOU'RE the one that's pregnant.  But don't worry, I'll totally help you when the babies get here.  *snicker*

Hopefully she'll snap out of it in a few days.  Spontaneously deciding to pull out one's fur is not really a great quality in a fiber animal.  Poor silly girl. 

2 comments:

  1. Oh, goodness! And it's supposed to get quite cold later this week. Poor Storm :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Awww, poor Storm. I have a very broody chicken who is defending her unhatchable eggs as if the future of the chicken race depended on them, so I feel your pain :)

    ReplyDelete