Bunny - Chicken Playdate

While we weeded out the overgrown rose garden this morning, we thought we'd let Winston and the girls meet each other. We set up the pen in the yard, and then brought Winston out first. He was excited, but also a little nervous. Since he's always been a house bunny, I'm not sure he'd ever seen outside before when he wasn't in a carrier.

He ran around, didn't try eating anything, but did scratch a little in the dirt. Then we added the chickens to the mix. I stood guard, in case one of them tried to peck him. To my surprise, he seemed unconcerned about the chickens, but they tried to avoid him as much as possible.

I guess this makes sense -- Winston used to live in a pet store with a cat, dog, guinea pig, hen, and rooster to play with. He's used to other creatures. The chickens, however, freak out when a sparrow finds its way into their pen.

All went peacefully and the chickens, ahem, aerated our yard quick a bit, which they haven't had a chance to do in months.

Bunny Room Upgrade

Well the mantle's been constructed and stained for 3 weeks. It hasn't been warm enough to apply the polyurethane one single day since then, so it's languishing in my living room.

We did manage a little house productivity yesterday in the form of removing the chartreuse carpet from the bunny hallway. I liked the carpet a lot, but it was more than 30 years old, and Winston had taken a shine to scratching at it to file down his claws. I didn't care that he was wrecking the carpet, but was a little worried he'd eat the fibers.

So now it's gone, and to our surprise, the floors underneath are perfect. The best floors in the house. Naturally.

We also moved the chest from the attic downstairs as a place to keep all of Winston's bunny plunder. It's a vast improvement, no?

In other news, life is getting slightly less terrible and snow-covered for the chickens, we've started our first round of seeds for spring planting, and I'm hopeful that today might be the first precipitation-less day in more than a month.