The Parker Report - June 17, 2015 - 4th Installment

June 17, 2015 - 4^th Installment of The Parker Report

Here's the latest on Parker.  I would have written sooner, but it's been a busy week and I needed to sit down and get the photos off my Nook and Brad's phone and upload them to my Google Photo page.  I just uploaded 8 new pictures with Parker.  Brad finally got one of me in the picture.  I'm always the one taking them and I told Brad that I was disappointed that I didn't have any pictures of me with Harley when we had him, so Brad said the next time he would try to take more pictures of me with the next rabbit we had.

OK, this is what he's been up to lately...

He now plays "Hop on Pop" with Brad.  Brad lays on the floor and Parker hops on his back.  (Photos online).

He now knows that his greens come from the frig and he just started to follow us into the kitchen and beg when we go in there.  Of course we don't give in because he has plenty of grass and can wait until dinner for the greens.  He gets them twice a day and sometimes for lunch if we're home.

He's getting used to being picked up more.  Brad's been picking him up more this week just so he can get used to being handled and he's pretty good about it now.  He only does a small thump as he's set back down on the floor after being held.  I was even able to pick him up this morning to get him off of Brad's shoulders and back and he didn't slip out of my hands like butter this time so I know things are improving.  (Brad had carried him over to the sofa and was holding him there and he got out of his arms and crawled up and around to his shoulders as he was still sitting there.)

He follows us around the house like a little puppy dog (especially Brad).  I think he's become really attached to us so I have a feeling this might end up being his permanent home.  (We'll see.)

He loves to go on outings and hops right into his carrier.  We leave it on the floor in the hallway and he goes into it all the time.  We've taken him on a few trips in the Navigator and went to the hardware stores (Lowe's and Home Depot) three times.  Yesterday we took him with us when I had to pick up a small order and we put him in the cart with his carrier.  We leave the top partially unzipped so he pops up and stands on his hind feet and holds on with his paws on top of the carrier while looking around and taking it all in.  People expect to see a dog in the cart, but they do a double-take and smile when they see a rabbit in the cart.  It's kind of funny. They go "Oh, it's a bunny!"  People can't resist smiling when they see him.  We went to Lowe's to buy mini blinds for our bathroom this weekend and took him with us and ended up having a whole conversation about rabbits with the sales lady that was helping us.

Parker now has an extra litter box and water bowl in the upstairs guest bathroom because he spends a lot of time up there when we're in the office.

Sometimes he just goes up there on his own because he likes laying in the bathroom since it's quiet and dark.  (I uploaded a picture of him laying on the bathroom floor.)

We've been leaving his pen open at night when we go to bed because we got tired of him moving it and we were afraid he would hurt his teeth by biting the cage.  Brad bought some PVC pipe and made notches in the ends so they fit over the rungs of the X-pen and rigged it so the pen stays rigid and he can't move it or get it out of square.  This actually works for awhile, but one night Brad didn't clip the opening well and Parker managed to either squeeze through or jump over the top.  We'll never know for sure.  We're considering putting up a "bunny cam" to watch him in action.  He doesn't try any funny business with the pen during the day when we have to go to work.  He stays in there OK.  It's only at night that we have a problem.

He actually doesn't get into anything at night (as far a chewing or digging), which is good.  He usually likes to lay on the floor near the front door for some odd reason, so we just let him sleep there if he wants.  He knows where his potty and food are.  It seems like the only time he tries to nibble on things he's not suppose to is when he wants attention.  (Just like a little kid.  He usually does it mostly with me.)  We just have the extra X-pen up in front of the three small bedrooms and put the baby gate at our bedroom door so he doesn't come in. (We don't have our bedroom completely "bunny proofed" yet.)  In the morning he comes up around 5:45 to 6:00 am and looks in through the gate at us to tell us to get up and feed him.

It's a good thing we're morning people!  We're used to it because Harley would do the same thing, except we could trust him not to chew on our bed so we didn't put up the gate so he would just hop into the room every morning.

We were without an A/C for a couple of days a week ago (of course it was the hottest days!), but all is well now.  We had a guy come out and charge us $65 to diagnose the problem and tell us we needed a part that was going to cost an additional $114.  Luckily Brad's very mechanical (he built his old muscle car) so he went and picked up the part at Grainger for $44 and put it in himself.  That fixed part of the problem but the motor still wasn't firing up.  Brad ended up calling a different A/C repair company from Concord and they said one of the problems was that he hooked up one wire to the wrong side of the part (he took a picture of the way it was when the other guy left and did it the same way) and the other problem was a spider that got in between two connections and shorted it or kept it from making contact.  Can you believe that!?  It cost us $85 to find that out.  In the meantime, we had to keep bunny boy cool by having a tabletop fan on the kitchen island and every once an a while I'd wet my fingers and dab the tips of his ears to cool him off.  The good thing is we now have cool air again.  Hooray!

We ended up moving our tall plant to the stair landing window ledge this week after Brad discovered Parker nibbling on a fallen leaf.  We're usually very diligent with plucking the leaves when they look like they're going to fall soon so we only had one fall to the floor unnoticed that Harley found one time and we got it out of his mouth right away.  We weren't sure how much of the leaf Parker ate, so we kept a careful watch over him that night and he seemed to be unfazed by it, thank goodness!

Parker has been enjoying his "bunny pinata" that I made with a paper bag full of grass.  I hung it on the side of the pen and made a couple of holes so he can get at the grass and sometimes he sticks his entire head in the bag.  It's really entertaining to watch him.  He also likes the toilet paper tubes filled with grass.  On both of those I put just a small pinch of alfalfa inside (like the prize at the bottom of the cereal box).  Today I opened up the big box where I store the grass and I was trying to fill his grass tube.  He actually hopped into my lap and was eating the grass from the tube as I held it.  (He really wanted to get to the alfalfa.)  Unfortunately, Brad was working on the Navigator outside so I couldn't call him to take a picture because it would have been a good one.  Yesterday it seemed like he ate a ton of grass.  Every time I looked at him he was eating.  I guess it's because he's a growing boy with lots of energy.  I never saw Harley eat that much because he was older and less active.

It should be interesting bringing Parker to Petco Adoption Day on Saturday.  I'll probably bring a grass tube to keep him occupied and he can go into his carrier if he wants to get away from people.  We'll also bring a packing blanket to put under the pen and we have some extra floor tiles in the garage so we'll probably bring one so he can have something cool to lay on if he wants.  Hopefully he behaves.