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She burrowed through the shed wall

echolouise

Young Bun
So Effie has tunneled THROUGH her shed and under it. Luckily the boys aren't interested in joining her and have been relocated to shed number 2 where she will join them as soon as we can catch her.
To be clear, she has chewed a hole through a 10mm plywood liner, 2 layers of insulation and 3/4" thick exterior wood cladding within a 12h period, not because she is under stimulated but because her main purpose is to torment us.
She has been happily digging a tunnel network under the giant bunny paradise we provided her for 48h now (we know this because the shed is full of dirt and tree roots). All attempts to trap her when she returns for food have been unsuccessful, she is a smart cookie and would rather go hungry than enter the humane rabbit trap we bought.
We have meshed up around the shed area to stop predators coming in at night but now her excavations are causing the 8x6 shed to sink and we are scared to go inside in case it comes down on her.

Does any one have ANY ideas what we should do next?
Don't care if it's a daft one, we reached the stage today where all we can do is stare at the situation blankly.

Thank you so much to anyone who answers.
 
It sounds too unsafe to leave it and hope that you can catch her as things are I think. Would it be possible to dismantle the shed carefully? Hopefully someone with a bit more practical experience will come along soon to give some advice.
 
Does the shed have "runners" underneath the floor so the floor boards are not resting on the ground?
My initial thought would be to try and remove more of the floor to give you access to the underside.

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As far as I remember, under the lino is a thick ply floor with wooden joists that are sitting on lines of concrete blocks.
Thanks for the suggestion, we didn't consider ripping it apart from the bottom up.
If we start with a rabbit sized hole it might interest her enough to come through it.
We have resigned ourselves to the fact that the shed (can we even still call it that when it looks like Swiss cheese) isn't going to survive.
 
I would hope that you might be able to repair however a large a piece you remove. Obviously it will need something un- chewable between the lino and the wooden floor. A metal mesh or contrete paving slabs would curtail even an enthusiastic bun

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Goodness me a swiss cheese shed! She sounds like an amazing escapologist.

I can hear one of my indoor bucks ripping up a cardboard box but none of them have ever managed to get through the side of a shed. Incredible.

Hope you manage to find her and that some kind of metal sheeting can save the shed.
 
@motty oh no, she went through the walls not the floor! The entire corner of the shed has been removed at rabbit height.
As far as we can tell she is just doing some lockdown home improvements just like us humans. She isn't really going anywhere, more like adding a basement level to the existing structure 🤪
 
@tulsi I really hope it can be saved, I'm being quoted I will be on a waiting list until July for a new shed to be fitted 😬.
 
Ok so bunny has chewed through the wall not the floor, if I've read your thread right. So if you can repair the wall, with maybe a wooden panel outside or inside ? Could you then line the inside walls with puppy panels all around ?
 
@pets mum
Hubby has been attaching leftover weld mesh to the inside and outside of shed 2 today just to be sure. Shed 1 might be a gonner due to the fact that the tunnels are causing the ground underneath to collapse. If its salvageable it will most likely need fully dismantled and rebuilt on a new base.
Main issue is safely catching effie before it falls through.
On the plus side she's having a great time. I went out again 10 mins ago and she was pushing dirt around and binkying away in my torchlight.
 
@tonibun
Yes, she is spayed.
She is also not a young thing (trying to calculate it and she must be 8 or 9 by now).
She goes extra loopy every spring and calling her a handful is an understatement but she has started early this year I guess.
 
I have a theory as to why she is doing this. I may be wrong but as she lives with 2 boys is she thinking that if/when one of them gets her pregnant, she would need for the babies to be hidden as the other boy would kill them. We know she can't have babies but she doesn't know.
 
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