The Parker Report - August 16, 2015 - 8th Installment

Here's the 8th Installment of "The Parker Report" – August 16, 2015:

This is what's been going on the past couple of weeks with Parker:

He now has a thing about bathrooms. He goes behind the sink in the downstairs half-bath and lays there sometimes. (Probably because it's dark and the cold tile feels good on a hot day.) I walked in and caught him with the toilet paper unrolled a few feet onto the floor one day so now I make sure there isn't a “tail” hanging down that he can grab. I also try to make sure the toilet lids are down. We don't need a curious bunny hopping up and falling into the toilet.

He also likes to play in the toilet room of our master bath. He chews on the plastic caps covering the base bolts and also the toilet seat bolts on the underside of the back of the toilet.

For some unexplained reason, he always follows Brad when he goes to the bathroom. When Brad shuts the door, Parker sometimes lays on the floor just outside the door waiting for him.  Yesterday morning Brad said Parker followed him in and then proceeded to sit on his underwear around his ankles. He's an odd little bunny.

Parker has been like a shadow to Brad, sometimes following him around the house.

He's doing pretty well with following us out of a room or downstairs when we call him.

If we want him to come downstairs to his pen, all we have to do is open up the kibble canister or tap on the cookie sheet that serves as his food tray in his pen. He knows both of those sounds mean food and he comes running. Sometimes as an incentive to get him to his pen (like when we need to leave the house and close him in there) we put a little bit of alfalfa in his grass pinata to coax him in there and that works well.

This week Brad forgot to put the universal remote out of reach and Parker grabbed it off the sofa and chewed half of the mute button off of it.  I wasn't about to check his droppings for it. I told Brad he just has to remember to put valuable things out of his reach.

A couple of weeks ago we installed a floating laminate wood floor in our gym in the spare bedroom so I no longer have to worry about Parker getting hurt on the tack strips.

Previously, we had multiple packing blankets on top of carpet pad under the gym equipment and Parker was always trying to pull up the edges that were stuck to the tack strips.

I was always worried he would hurt his mouth or feet on them. The floor is great. It's now a lot easier to clean with the vacuum too. Before the fur would just stick to the packing blankets and I couldn't vacuum them very well. He does try to chew on the oak transition strip across the doorway so we've had to cover it with folded paper and that seems to do the trick.

Hopefully, he won't pee in the corner again like he did when he was mad after we returned from leaving him at DeAnna's house while we were on vacation. That would be a bad thing.

That's why we're only having bunny sitters come here whenever possible because rabbits hate change. You can't even rearrange their pens without getting an attitude from them.

This week our neighbor had their two dead 30-foot poplar trees removed from their backyard and that was pretty exciting to watch (wondering it a falling branch would hit the fence between our yards), but the guys were really good and nothing terrible happened except for one branch that slipped as they cut it and it flew into our yard and hit our family room window.  Thankfully nothing was broken and the guys came over and cleaned up everything when they were done.  We did find out, however, that the noise of the chainsaw frightened Parker every time they fired it up.  For a while he tried to sleep under the chair next to my side of the bed, but then he realized that was a bad idea since that was the spot closest to the noise.  So then he went downstairs and hid in the box in his pen, which wasn't too much further away from the noise.  We comforted him when it first started and then I think he finally realized it wasn't going to hurt him.

Another sound that freaks him out is the sound of meat sizzling on a grill.
Whenever I cook chicken on our paninni press/grill, his eyes get big and he runs for cover every time.  He also doesn't like the garbage disposal.  Luckily, I only grill the chicken maybe once a week and don't turn on the disposal much.  Otherwise, this could really be a problem since his pen is in the kitchen nook area.

We were hoping to take Parker on a outing this weekend because he usually calms down and sleeps good after that.  Saturday, the 15th was supposed to be his day to go to Brentwood Petco for the adoption day with the Contra Costa Rabbit Rescue.  Unfortunately, they had to cancel last minute because they learned that the Martinez animal was having a mass adoption event that day and would be giving away the animals for free that day.  The rescue group wanted to be there to supervise the rabbit adoptions to make sure the bunnies went to good caring indoor homes.  As I mentioned at the beginning of my blogs, Parker was rescued from the Martinez shelter and I learned that they tend to euthanize the pink-eyed bunnies sooner because they don't like them as much.  That's really bad.  I thought a shelter is supposed to care about the welfare of ALL animals, no matter what they look like.
Hopefully for the sake of all the bunnies they find good loving homes this week.