Houdini and the Follower

 Meet Hershey and Lilly!  We added these two cute faces to our family on September 23rd 2011 after the tragic deaths of Daisy and Pokey.  Lilly and Hershey are sisters, and as such are able to share a cage and look a LOT alike.  However, on closer inspection, Hershey (on the left) has a darker coat and a lot more white speckles on her neck and face...
And she has that mischievous gleam in her eye.
I should have noticed that on day one...but I was just too taken back on how soft and cute and soft...and...well...soft she was.
She was masking her true personality.
We will get to that a little later!
Hershey is my daughter Emmi's bunny and Lilly is mine.

 Here are Daisy and Pokey.  Daisy was my bunny and is the same breed as our new bunnies, a mini-rex.  We called her our "cow bunny" because she looked like a black and white cow.  Daisy was a fun loving and friendly bunny who liked to do flips in the air.  Pokey was my daughters bunny and was a mixed breed.  She was a mini-lop and rex mix.  While she wasn't as soft as Daisy, she had floppy ears that she didn't have full control of.  It was seriously cute.

Daisy lived in our laundry room in a makeshift cage for 3 years, Pokey lived in a separate but similar enclosure in our laundry room for four years.  The biggest issues we had with Daisy and Pokey were that they didn't get along after about fifteen minutes, so we couldn't put them together.  Daisy liked to chew on everything:  pine cones, wood, furniture, your shirt....etc.  Pokey on the other hand liked to pull at the carpet.   OH and he once peed in mid-air on my nephew.

This is our other family member, Tipsy.  Tipsy was a gift from a college boyfriend during I time in my life when I was dealing with a lot.  Tipsy has been part of my family since April 1997 and has pestered, bugged, woken me up, attacked me, meowed until I was deaf and cuddled up with me in bed ever since. So pretty much, he is just like my child.

Tipsy is very territorial and does not like other animals.  So when I decided to get rabbits I was a bit nervous as to how he would react.  The first few months were iffy, but then Tipsy warmed up to the bunnies (as much as Tipsy can warm up to another animal).  His favorite bunny to play with was Pokey.  The two of them would chase each other around the family room.  Tipsy would bat the bunnies ears and then the bunny would paw at the cat.  It really was cute.
And then our precious bunnies died within three days of each other the beginning of September.  At first I didn't think I would ever get rabbits again, but by the end of September my daughter had talked me into looking for new family members.

 Meet Hershey.  Hershey is my daughters rabbit.  She looks so cute and innocent.  HAHAHA!  She and Lilly share an enclosure similar to the one our previous rabbits occupied.


The floor has a plastic tablecloth with a thick plastic over the top.  A pet exercise pen is used as a perimeter with their cage in one corner and a litter box in the other.

For four years we had rabbits in this enclosure with NO PROBLEMS.

Within one week Hershey had escaped.

I was floored.  One hour there were two rabbits, the next there was only one.

At first I thought there was an opening in the enclosure she escaped through so I made sure it was snapped together tightly and then went upstairs.
The next day she got out again.
We figured out that she would climb the water bottle (which at that time was hooked to the outside of the cage) hop onto the cement ledge in the basement and then hop down to freedom.  Pretty smart rabbit.
So we moved the water bottle.
A week later she got out again!
At this point I changed her name to HOUDINI!

So I added a partial cover to the enclosure that attached to their cage.  The cover can be lifted to feed them, but keeps the rabbits from using the leverage of their cage to climb out.
I week later she escaped again!

I was puzzled, so I sat downstairs one night for over an hour, watching the bunnies and noticed that Hershey would stand on her back feet and try and climb the cage.
Yes, climb!

So I found an old window screen and put it over the whole enclosure.

A week later....
Yeah, I know, you get the picture by now.
She found freedom again, and again and again.
Each time I would add another think to the cage to try and keep the bunny in.
By last night her enclosure looked like this:

A far cry from how it had been for four years.  Hershey had managed in one week to do what our previous rabbits had not managed in four years.

And what about Lilly.  Well this whole time she had remained in the cage, like the obedient bunny I thought she was.

Until last night!

I'll get to THAT story in a minute.  First I have to tell you that last week I watched as Hershey (aka Houdini) was giving Lilly escape lessons.  He would stand up against the cage and then wait until she did the same.  I even watched in horror as Hershey climbed on Lillys back  and then stood up and put her paws on the top of the enclosure.
Good Grief!  That rabbit is going to be the death of me.

So last night I am awakened by sounds upstairs (we live in a split level home with four levels...the rabbits are on the basement level, our bedrooms are on the top).   Since our cat Tipsy enjoys waking us almost every night with his nocturnal prowling, I lifted my head, hollered at the cat and then proceeded to go back to sleep, only to be woken up twice more.

By the third time I decided that the cat was going to spend the rest of the night in the basement so I could sleep, but as I jumped out of bed I watched as the cat ran one way and something else ran the other way... or hopped the other way.  Keep in mind that up until this point every time Hershey had escaped she had stayed in the basement.

So I flip on the hall light only to realize that the offending rabbit is none other than Lilly...my sweet innocent bunny who had never escaped before.

So I pick her up, take her to the basement and put her in the cage, only to realize that there are NO bunnies in the cage, Hershey too has escaped.

30 minutes later we found Hershey in a garbage can.....She had managed to hop off of the cement ledge into  the laundry room trash can and then tip it over...trapping herself.

Needless to say, at 10:00 this morning I bought one of these.