Sandy McFadden

I’m one of those guys who has a once typical Monday to Friday 9:00 – 5:00 job, so I look forward to the weekends.

With four kids we usually keep pretty busy but it’s usually doing something fun with the family which is always nice, but weekends are also the time to get nagging chores done. This weekend involved starting to get things ready for an upcoming family get away.

About three years ago, against my better judgement, we adopted three cute little bunnies. One for each of my daughters. We made sure we picked three females so that we wouldn’t get over populated. I’ve heard stories where people weren’t as lucky as us where mistakes were made and one of the females, wasn’t. We were told they were mini lops. Our first clue was when we saw their parents and they weren’t so mini, but we had driven over an hour to pick them up so we took them anyway. Sure enough there is nothing mini about these things now that they’re grown.

It didn’t take long before the youngest two gave up on looking after their bunnies, which was expected they were fairly young. Luckily our oldest still does almost everything for them, although there are lots of reminders and prodding along the way.

We have two homes for them, one in our shed to keep them sheltered and warm in the winter, and one outdoors so they can have more exercise and fresh air. We take them in every night and let them out every morning as long as it is nice out. This way we don’t have to worry about them while we’re sleeping. But we’re getting ready to go away and it would be a lot to ask of someone to let them out every morning and bring them back in.

So I was tasked with building an enclosure that could sit inside their outside home that would keep them more protected from weather and just in case, any predators thought they might try to get in.

I’m not a fan of these rabbits. From what I can tell they are more trouble than they’re worth, but my kids love them and I love my kids. So in spite of the fact that I am far from a handy man I set out to build this enclosure. There is nothing fancy, four walls, a roof and a little door way to get in. I managed to get it all staying together but it doesn’t look pretty.

During the process I somehow managed to get a big scratch right down my nose and ripped a big piece of skin off the palm of my main hand.

So now the bunnies have a place to stay outside overnight and my In-Laws who are looking after them don’t have to cart them back and forth, but I like them even less. If I didn’t love my kids so much I’d consider rabbit stew and cook them on a bonfire made of the wood from their home I just built.

OK I really don’t have it in me to do that, they are our pets and I prefer my meat anonymous and already in the grocery store, but that doesn’t stop me from threatening it every once in a while.