Mr Scruff's Scribbles - 6/13/2005

I’m going to start this week’s waffle where I left off last week on the subject of cagoules.

Now, I was only guessing when I suggested that Jim and Delia might have matching cagoules. They’ve got matching walking sticks (no, not zimmers, posh mountain-climbing pointy sticks) and matching walking boots so why not cagoules I thought. Anyway, The Management have reliably informed me they do not have matching cagoules “yet”. Now can we please draw a line under the matter, never mention it again and start feeding me my proper allowance again. Pretty please...

Right, grovelling over, let’s get down to business.

It’s been another busy weekend in the Bobtails camp. I’ve had my big ears to the ground but funnily enough those lovely laydee volunteers aren’t sharing their secrets anymore. It’s no surprise really, especially as everything they tell me ends up on here for the world to see.

One thing I have seen this week in the Bobtails garden is plenty of bird action. Sadly lads I don’t mean bird as in laydee, I mean bird as in feathers.

We’ve got a chatty family of wrens nesting in the garden and mum and dad are very busy right under our noses feeding their young.

And then there’s those menacing magpies who keep pestering us buns when we’re out on the lawn. The other day I saw Bruno bun dozing in the sun and before the big bruiser had even had time to blink, one of the magpies had pecked out a bit of his fur.

While we all fell about laughing as Bruno examined his bald bum, there is a very serious message here. Bunnies need to stay away from the edge of their pens and runs if there are magpies about because it could easily have been an eye that Bruno lost.

Silly Jimmy, the new French lop who is bigger than me in body than in brain, if you catch my drift, couldn’t even feel the magpie pecking away at him through his rolls of fur and flab.

There’s one laydee who comes to help out here at Bobtails – she speaks a different language to the rest of them. She’s quite often “off up’t garden t’ clean out t’rabbits” – whatever that means.

Anyway, I heard she’d sent a text to Delia to find out how her bonding buns Flossie and Einstein were getting on. “Any licking yet?” said the text. That would have been all well and good had the dizzy doe not sent it to her friend who was on holiday in Spain with his new girlfriend. Goodness knows where Delia finds these people, some of them are as mad as hatters.

And talking of mad hatters – our travelling bun Sir Parsley is off to Las Vegas with Sarah and William for the holiday of a lifetime. Wouldn’t it be buntastic if he met a nice American laydee and got hitched in an Elvis chapel of lurve, or tried his paw at Black Jack and won millions for the Bobtails buns. Viva Las Vegas my son, you’re going to have a rockin’ time.

I’m going to have to move on from something so exciting and happy to a story that will make you cry.

I don’t like telling you sad tales but this is something I can’t ignore, especially as here at Bobtails we really do hammer home the fox message.

A couple of Bobtails bunnies were enjoying the freedom of the garden at their new home so much that at bedtime they didn’t want to return to their hutch. Their new owners gave up trying to get them in and went to bed, leaving the two buns running loose in the garden. The next morning their owners went down to the garden to find the poor little souls had been eaten by a fox.

These two buns were once part of the Bobtails family and their new owners would have been warned about foxes and given the lecture I hear Delia giving hundreds of times each month. Bunnies should not be left unattended in the garden because foxes are everywhere, night and day. Foxes are dangerous, they’re not frightened of coming into gardens or houses for that matter. I hear lots of foxes on the prowl here in the Bobtails garden and that’s why our pens are very very secure. If you have any doubt about the security of your rabbit pen, don’t just assume foxes don’t come into your garden because they more than likely do, do something about it.

On that very sad note, I’m going to hop off to give my fellow buns a nudgey cuddle. And here’s a big nudgey cuddle to keep you going until next week.