On the Building of Hutches
My original (and quickly rejected) drawing for our bunny hutch
If you’ve seen any of my latest posts, you know we now have 3 adorable bunnies.
When our friend Heidi told us about her litter of bunnies, they were still tiny and couldn’t leave their mother. This gave us several weeks to figure out their housing.
One of the boys before his eyes were open.
We decided to build a rabbit hutch based on three things:
1. It must have three separate condos. We didn’t yet know the sexes of the bunnies and wanted to prevent unexpected litters.
2. It must be made from our pile of scrap lumber.
3. It must have some sort of system to catch the rabbits’, um, “garden fertilizer.”
So instead of following a building plan, we decided to, as they say, “fly by the seat of our pants” (hmm . . . now that phrase would make an interesting future illustration).
Our plan consisted of buying 3 litter trays and building the hutch to fit their dimensions.
I made the following video of the hutch construction:
The video conveniently omits the many times we started all over, and mis-cut boards, and changed directions. It also doesn’t show the new set of scars on my upper arm from a trio of rusty staples I rammed into while pulling nails from the previously-used wood.
Needless to say, I learned a couple things:
It’s significantly harder to convert an idea into something 3-dimensional than it is to convert an idea into something 2-dimensional.
Building plans exist for a purpose.
There is also a purpose to tetanus shots.
The finished hutch
I also learned a bonus item:
4. When you build a hutch, you might get more residents than rabbits.
Within days of finishing the hutch, I noticed an additional resident. I named her Charlotte.
I took this photo of Charlotte after dark. Unfortunately the flash didn't show her to her best advantage.
I think she was a spotted orbweaver. She was a little disconcerting as she was quite large and always at eye level. But we left her alone as she ate a lot of insects that would otherwise have bothered the bunnies.
After a month or so, Charlotte disappeared. I can’t say I was sad to see her go, especially since she never wrote any profound messages for me in her webs. Perhaps she found happier hunting grounds.