Not taking the bait

Not taking the bait
Originally uploaded by horsenbuggy

As you can see in this photo, I attempted to lure the bunny out of her cage with a delicious treat. Number 11 mislead me on the power of the graham cracker. The rabbit totally ignored my bait.

She did hop out of her cage again today when I got home to feed her. She was just so excited when I opened her cage to give her her afternoon snack, that she leapt out. But again, she freaked out on the shiny floor and hopped back in immediately. As you can see in the photo, I laid down a bath towel for her to jump on to. I figured that she wouldn't slide as much on the towel as on the bare floor. She still didn't leave her cage.

I sat in the room, staring and poking at her for a while. I finally gave up and went to watch TV in the other room. After about 30 minutes, I heard a significant noise. I get up to check on her each time I hear a noise that I don't recognize. Welp, this time, she had hopped out of her cage and onto the towel. She sniffed around and examined the extents of the towel, but wouldn't leave its safety.

At that point, I wasn't sure if she was freaked out by the touch of the floor or the reflection of herself in the floor. Not that her reflection is perfect as it would be in a lake, but there is definitely a white spot staring back up at her from the floor. I remember that there was a huge dog on "The Dog Whisperer" who refused to go onto any shiny floor or surface because he'd slid and slammed into a wall (knocking himself unconcious) as a puppy. Maybe something similar was going on here.

I spread the towel out so that it covered more area. She hopped back out onto the bigger towel and checked out her expanded territory. At that point, the towel connected with the rug that is under my coffee table. I had to call her attention to the rug by patting on it. She got the hint and headed over for it.

She eventually became comfortable enough to venture out onto the wood floor, but you can clearly see that it is difficult for her to get around on it. She has to crawl using all four appendages individually. Have you ever seen a rabbit do that? It looks really odd. They usually work their front feet together and then hop with their hind legs together. When they crawl, they look like tiny soldiers trying to shimmy under a barbed wire fence.

I have some electrical wires/cables that run along the baseboard of one wall. I don't want her to chew on them, so I'm not going to leave her alone in the room now that she will get out of her cage (unless I close her cage door). And if you think it's silly for me to worry about her chewing on wires, I've already seen her attempt to chew on my brick hearth. Silly rabbit.

OK. It looks like I have officially achieve "Cool Human" status. I just gotta get her to hop around on the floor during the day when the room is flooded with good light. Bunnies move too fast for low light.