About a year ago, my sister decided she wanted a new pet, as she had greatly been missing having a cute, furry little hamster to play with. Originally she had been planning on getting another hamster, but later decided to get a bunny rabbit from a local bunny rescue. As I write this article, I have a sweet little bunny cuddled up on my lap enjoying head pets. We've enjoyed having him in our family greatly, but he can be a little brat at times. In this article, I'll be talking about my personal experience with having a pet bunny around.
So, why get a pet rabbit? For starters, they're small, aren't too hard to take care of, fluffy, and sweet little animals. Our bunny is a very adventurous and smart little guy, making him a lot of fun to be around, but also causing him to be a stinker at times. He adjusted to being around us all fairly quickly after we got him and he behaves differently for each of us. For example, he likes to push his luck with my sister, his mommy, to try and get her to pay more attention to him whereas he tends to be on much better behavior for the rest of the family. Bunnies need a cage that is big enough for necessities such as a box, food and water as well as some room for them to move around in and a higher section they can jump on to. Bunnies also need plenty of time to run around and "shake their sillies out" to keep them healthy and in good shape. My sister and I like to let our bunny run around our room at night before bed, or at an earlier time if we'll be tired at night. We have wire shelf pieces strung together to block off areas we don't want the bunny to get to, such as under our beds as he thinks it's a bunny cave and doesn't like coming out. We also have a harness and a leash so we can let him run around in our yard and nibble on the grass there.
Something to be aware of is that bunnies like chewing on cables. Both my laptop and cell phone chargers have little nibble marks on them from when I wasn't paying close enough attention to him. The worst damage he's done is ruin a charging cable for my sister's laptop by chewing through a decent portion of it. Things like this can be prevented by setting up blockades that prevent the bunny from getting within tasting distance of cables. Also, letting the bunny run around in a room with fewer cables will make it easier to prevent damaged cables. As mentioned above, we have a cage made out of wire shelves set up to keep him at a good distance from cables. We also have a small rug covering cables on the ground. Our bunny sometimes digs at the carpet (or our laps) to point out he's unhappy or just to get our attention. He's never caused any significant amount of damage to the rug, though he has pulled up a strand or two and decided it was grass.
Over all, bunnies are very sweet pets. One of my other friends has a pet rabbit that he spoils with lots of fresh veggies and he loves his little bunny rabbit. He mostly just lets his bunny run around her cage, which is a fairly large cage, so it's not as necessary for her to run outside of her cage as much. Just make sure you have resting pads for your bunny's cage as the wires can hurt their feet if they don't have anywhere else to sit.
