There's a ménagerie of animals chez nous, including a number of birdies, a rather useful egg-producing chicken, pairs of dogs, cats and horses and, finally, a rabbit called Bungus. Bungus is getting on in age, being in bunny years up there with Methuselah, numbering eight hundred, eighty and eight. About ten in real life. He lives in a cage with every mod con, including a view. Rabbits here can't touch the floor, or straw, we know from long and bitter experience, as they will catch myxomatosis and die in some agony. So, Bungus lives in the nearest thing to a bubble, in this case, a cage on a table outside.
His teeth have gone from his years of crunching bunny food and he now likes to gum a little lettuce in the afternoons and to snack rather heavily on bread in the mornings. Bread from that fine bakery Mr Bimbo. He gets two slices. This produces a certain amount of waste, with helps explain our ant problem.
Bungus came from Pamplona. We were there, many years ago, and we needed a hospital companion to help out when I was unable to offer my bedside presence between several horrible operations being suffered by my wife. 'I don't mind their attentions,' she said, 'as long as I can have something furry to hold'. Oddly, a teddy bear wouldn't do. The hospital agreed to a conejo, as long as it stayed in its cage.
We cleaned his cage yesterday, filling a garbage bag with junk, and replaced the flooring with a number of newspapers carefully collected the day before. Bungus is a conservative rabbit, and doesn't like change so it took a while before he allowed us to reach in and tickle him.
Now, he's watching the gate, chewing quietly on a favourite nut. He'll thump his back leg if he needs anything.
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