First time poster. Sorry for hopping right in. It's for the bunnies.
Not sure if this is the right board for this, but it seemed like one of the busier ones, and we need help quickly-ish.
On Saturday afternoon my wife saw a rabbit in the garden. Not a wild one. We live in Dulwich, South East London. Clearly this is a pet. Here's the little beauty:
We went around and asked all the immediate neighbors. No one knew of anyone who had a rabbit. Although there was one family that were out who seemed like the only people who it could have been. We took a peek over the fence and sure enough we see a hutch with a door ajar. Bingo! So I leave a note on the door letting them know we're looking after their little guy.
Then we spent an hour comedically trying to catch him (sorry I refer to the rabbit as him, not sure why, probably some gender stereotyping resulting from over-exposure to Bugs as a kid). Eventually we managed with a plate of leaves and some stealth.
I fashioned a makeshift hutch out of our kids cardboard construction toy and some bin-bags for weather-proofing. And we put some chairs around it as reinforcement.
We read the RSPCA Rabbit Care guidelines about having a place to hide and room to stand up - that's what informed the architecture. We put a bunch of ripped up paper in there to make it cosy. So we were feeling relatively OK about this temporary arrangement. It's clearly far from perfect. But we thought it'd do for a few hours. And we fed him (leaves and broccoli and some long grass / hay), put out some water, and gently petted him a bit.
Nighttime comes around and they're not back. Nor has someone who's caring for the rabbit come round (I put the note on the front door rather than through the letterbox just in case they've got a friend who's not going through the house looking after the rabbit).
Being worried about foxes we clear out the shed and move the cardboard hutch in there. Clearly he doesn't like that much, there's a lot of scraping on the floor (we put down some more paper to try and make it somewhat comfortable). But we figured better he's a bit uncomfortable rather than a foxes dinner.
Same routine on Sunday.
Now it's Monday. Still no sign of the owners. And we're not sure what to do. No one seems to have contact information for them. And we're not sure whether to be worried or what to do.
The temporary accommodation is getting shabby and we clearly need to let him run around some more. But catching him has been really tricky, and we're not Rabbit handlers so we don't want to hurt him, or lose him.
What should we do?
Like I said we've never kept Rabbits and we're making this up as we go along! So please don't be mean, we're doing what we can with what we've managed to cobble together and read on the web.
The longer this goes on the more my wife and kids fall for the little guy...
Not sure if this is the right board for this, but it seemed like one of the busier ones, and we need help quickly-ish.
On Saturday afternoon my wife saw a rabbit in the garden. Not a wild one. We live in Dulwich, South East London. Clearly this is a pet. Here's the little beauty:
We went around and asked all the immediate neighbors. No one knew of anyone who had a rabbit. Although there was one family that were out who seemed like the only people who it could have been. We took a peek over the fence and sure enough we see a hutch with a door ajar. Bingo! So I leave a note on the door letting them know we're looking after their little guy.
Then we spent an hour comedically trying to catch him (sorry I refer to the rabbit as him, not sure why, probably some gender stereotyping resulting from over-exposure to Bugs as a kid). Eventually we managed with a plate of leaves and some stealth.
I fashioned a makeshift hutch out of our kids cardboard construction toy and some bin-bags for weather-proofing. And we put some chairs around it as reinforcement.
We read the RSPCA Rabbit Care guidelines about having a place to hide and room to stand up - that's what informed the architecture. We put a bunch of ripped up paper in there to make it cosy. So we were feeling relatively OK about this temporary arrangement. It's clearly far from perfect. But we thought it'd do for a few hours. And we fed him (leaves and broccoli and some long grass / hay), put out some water, and gently petted him a bit.
Nighttime comes around and they're not back. Nor has someone who's caring for the rabbit come round (I put the note on the front door rather than through the letterbox just in case they've got a friend who's not going through the house looking after the rabbit).
Being worried about foxes we clear out the shed and move the cardboard hutch in there. Clearly he doesn't like that much, there's a lot of scraping on the floor (we put down some more paper to try and make it somewhat comfortable). But we figured better he's a bit uncomfortable rather than a foxes dinner.
Same routine on Sunday.
Now it's Monday. Still no sign of the owners. And we're not sure what to do. No one seems to have contact information for them. And we're not sure whether to be worried or what to do.
The temporary accommodation is getting shabby and we clearly need to let him run around some more. But catching him has been really tricky, and we're not Rabbit handlers so we don't want to hurt him, or lose him.
What should we do?
- We're going to go and get a bunch of hay to make him more comfortable.
- Should we try and buy a proper hutch for him? We kind of don't want to do that in case 5 minutes later the owners turn up.
- Are there local groups (Dulwich) that we should speak to? Or the RSPCA?
- Should we let him out?
- Should we try and bunk over the fence and get him back into his hutch? (I don't think so then we'll have to break in to feed him?!?)
- If it gets to night-time again should we put him back in the shed like we have been doing?
- Anything we're missing.
- Anyone got any smart ideas?
Like I said we've never kept Rabbits and we're making this up as we go along! So please don't be mean, we're doing what we can with what we've managed to cobble together and read on the web.
The longer this goes on the more my wife and kids fall for the little guy...