The Rabbit Experience

I have been living in Linz since March, 2010. It's a nice city with great surroundings. The city is close to many beautiful cities in Europe including Budapest, Prague, Vienna and Munich. Linz is in the Upper Austria state of Austria. The Upper Austria state boasts of several beautiful mountains and industries. If you love sight-seeing, i bet this is a place to visit. Great mountain views, nice lakes and rivers, good environment and above all, an increasing cosmopolitan people.

My summer was enterprising as a Scottish family who were on the their way for a month vacation invited me to stay in their house for summer break and help care for the family pets; two rabbits.

Whiles growing up in Ghana, i spent some of my holidays in Takoradi, where family friends had reared rabbits. Our holiday afternoons were spent running around the hutch since we were not allowed to touch them. After many years, i had them as pets for 5 weeks in Austria. I was going to touch them as much as i could and watch them as long as i could. :)

It was a great experience! Rabbits are very lovely, sweet and funny animals notwithstanding their stubbornness. I spent lots of time reading about them, firstly to get to know their behaviors. I surfed the Internet hours and hours for almost three days reading about rabbits. I could have easily passed a veterinary test on rabbits.

Female rabbits are called doe are rather soft and obedient compared to their male counterparts, also called buck, according some internet sources. I found this to be true as the doe was really soft and yielding to directions unlike the buck. The multi-purpose rabbits' hutch is on the grassy surrounding in the house's compound.. I opened them daily for about 2-4 hours depending on the weather conditions.If it rained, i didn't allow them to get out of the cage. This keeps them neat and also prevents them digging holes. Beware!

The Jackie experience: The buck goes by the name Jack; he is super-active and acutely stubborn. He is the first to run out of the cage and purposefully begins chewing the fence, which is normal of rabbits from what i read. One day, i returned from University only to meet an empty cage. The rabbits had escaped. Confused as i was, i knew they'll return. However, after half an hour had gone by, i decided to shout their names, Jack hopped out of the neighbor's nicely planted vegetable farm. Standing afar off, he glared at me and seems to be shouting, I'm Free!I'm Free! Few minutes later, the doe came out from the same direction. Thankfully, they didn't cause any havoc to the neighbor's veggies.

I called the doe and she hopped to me. I lifted her into the cage and left Jackie to roam about. It seems the more freedom, it had, the more difficult it became to control Jackie; a naughty doe. He didn't want me touching him and hopped around, from one spot to another. Oh Jackie! When darkness fell, he went to stand beside the cage in an attempt to get inside. On realizing it, i helped Jackie into his cage. Well, i spent the afternoon till evening relaxing whiles preparing for some exams.

Rabbits!Rabbits!i guess everyone needs a rabbit especially a stubborn one,just to keep us calmer.lol!