HuniBuni – the Oakford family rabbit

2004 Jan 28 – 2006 Jan 01

Last night HuniBuni was killed by a fox. We are all sad to say goodbye to such a special rabbit. A lovely dwarf lop-eared rabbit :

HuniBuni at two months

Sonia and I agreed that we didn’t like to keep a pet in a cage, so we let HuniBuni (HB for short) run around the garden when we were around. During the day when we were all at work or school we put the “portcullis” ( a square wooden trellis covered in wire mesh ) across the door of the garage so that air and light could get in, but HB couldn’t get out.

At night we tempted HB into his hutch in the garage with a bowl of kale ( his favourite ). I would call out “HuniBuni, foodies” and he would hop in from the garden or the far end of the garage ( behind the bikes ) and jump into his hutch. In the morning whoever was up first would let HB out. He would then run to his favourite corner at the far end of the garden for a while, then back to his favourite patch of concrete in the garage, just at the end of the hutch. There he would do his “pancake bunny” – flattening himself out as flat as possible. He would also do this on the tiled hearth in the living room when he was indoors :

HuniBuni in pancake mode

I’m not sure whether we had trained HB or he had trained us. Probably a bit of both. He was part house rabbit, part pet rabbit and part wild rabbit. In the mornings he would come to the back door and push on the glass pane to see if it would open. If you opened the door he would poke his head into the kitchen, just to check it was still there, then run back outside. He would keep doing this until you gave him some food.

Sometimes he would come in the house and wander around, or Hannah would bring him in for a cuddle. His favourite place indoors was behind the sofa in the front room, but we had to stop that because he would chew through the lamp cable. Many cables have HuniBuni tooth marks in them – the laptop power cord, phones, the PS2 controllers. He was very quick!

HuniBuni was famous outside our family. When I needed a picture to test an LCD at work I naturally used one of HB - he was just so photogenic. His fame spread far and wide because for the first year of his life we thought he was a she – the vet put us right on this – this amused Sam’s Ice Hockey mates. He was just a beautiful, fluffy rabbit with a personality all his own. He was healthy and happy, king of his own rabbit world.

We took a chance allowing him to be part-wild, but if we hadn’t he wouldn’t have been HuniBuni, he would just have been another rabbit.

I will be upset for a day or two, then miss him occasionally for a few months. So I thought I would write this to remind me later when he has become just a distant memory…

Bye-bye HuniBuni! Just a totally rabbit-like rabbit!!

Howerd