The Fierce, Bad Rabbit; Taming the Hormonal Bun

▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄

He's Intact, He's Bad, He's Obnoxious,
and He's Not Happy

See more of this issue's content.

The Secret Voice of Rabbits, Part Deux

▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄

The Rabbit Rainbow Coalition
and Earthquakes

Hello again and welcome to another installment of our Secret Voice of Rabbits series. I've been real busy with all of my many duties as RabbitPhotog of this Running Bun Magazine and it seems I've been abandoned by our illustrious "social critic" of the rabbit multi-verse, the eminent Dr. Thumper S. Thompson, so I'll just try to hold the fort down by myself. With all that's been going on in Colorado recently, I think it would be safe to bet that Thompson is hopping around at Owl Creek bleary-eyed and looking a bit like one of the red eyed whites than the handsome golden lilac lynx colored Netherland Dwarf rabbit. No doubt he is hopping in zig zaggy fashion all around the place and celebrating what he had hoped, oh so long ago, to help pass into law when he ran for election to the Owsla. As we know, he was narrowly defeated but helped pave the way for more progressive agenda in his county and also helped to rat out the big money influences which defeated him. So I don't begrudge him the celebrating over the recent legalization of his favorite grass hay in his home county. I just hope, for the sake of his neighbors, that he doesn't go around shooting poops out of his butt too much and maybe hurt himself, his butt, or anybun else.

At some point, though, I know he will run out of money and no doubt come shyly hopping back to work as carrots aren't free and neither is that other stuff. Ya hear me doc? Don't forget about us, we will need you back in good time so hope you're having just that in the meanwhile.

Rocky Mountain Highs and Earthquakes on Mt. Rainier

There is a little known species of lagomorph I'd like to bring your attention to today as I think he has been making some news lately in the "real world" (and I say "real world" with a bit of a snort because, well, it just sounds like an oxymoron to those of us hopping from universe to universe here in the rabbit multi-verse.) It appears the extremely rare and elusive volcano rabbit may have been sighted at Mt. Rainier! And not only that, he may have caused a recent earthquake in Seattle! You've never heard of the volcano rabbit? Well hop on, dear reader, you know I'll gladly share that with you.

Romerolagus Diazi: The Volcano Rabbit

Here is a nice photo of this very rare, unique rabbit from my good friends over at the Edge of Existence.  They are a fantastic group of folks (as hoomins go) who do a lot to help endangered species and are also the folks who provide the awesome, fabulous iPhone app InstantWild (which is simply my fave!) It is an app which brings you live feeds from numerous wildlife camera traps around the world and is really kickin'. As an animal photographer, I love InstantWild and am rewarded now and then with the appearance of a rabbit or hare hamming it up for the wildlife cameras. Check it out and download the app, it's free and start helping endangered species today!

But I digress. You see in this photo above what is a species of real rabbit (as opposed to a hare mistaken, as usual, by most people to be a rabbit which is not the same species and can't even interbreed with them) that is the only rabbit in its genus. That means that it is a rabbit, it's in the rabbit family scientifically speaking but it's not related to your house rabbit or wild European rabbits or any other type of rabbit, and there are a number of other types of unrelated rabbit genus's or genera (proper form of plural genus).

This scrappy looking fellow looks kind of primitive, doesn't he? That's because he is a primitive type of rabbit which developed independently of the other genera of rabbits since way back when hares and rabbits had a common ancestor about, oh, 38 million years ago. Until now, the volcano rabbit has only been known to inhabit the volcanic highlands around Mexico City and nowhere else on Earth! Talk about a unique rabbit? Well you know what they say about unique rabbits, right? How do you catch them? You 'nique up on them, Mwah ha ha! (Hey look, I'm not the esteemed rabbit "social critic," he's up in his own highlands right now and I'm the only one tending the shop so can I have a break? Thanks.)

Here's another gorgeous photo of the volcano rabbit by Javier Lascurain over at Arkive.org - a fantastic wildlife photography charity! Pretty cool, huh? You bet! Isn't that a gorgeous little bunny even if he is pretty much the Fred Flintstone of bunnies? He really rather looks like a pika, don't you think? You might think why would these rabbits develop only around volcanos? Maybe they like it warm or maybe they like the exotic, nutrient rich grass grown in volcanic soil (calm down, Thumper S. Thompson! I can hear your excited thumps from here?)

Volcano Rabbit ©Javier Lascurain

Volcano Rabbit Sighted at Mt. Rainier!

Time for a confession, dear reader. I am a huge Seattle Seahawks fan and I'm really hoping they pummel the San Francisco 49ers this coming weekend for the big playoff game, the NFC championship. Why am I a Seahawks fan when I live all the over on the East coast? It's just a lovely town with very sweet people, incredible coffee, salmon, and a music scene history like no other. Anyway, maybe you've heard about the record setting earthquakes that happen regularly out there due to the rabid fans? They happen during the Seahawks games, especially when Marshawn Lynch has a big play. There was one famous earthquake caused by Marshawn Lynch's big touchdown via the 12th Man (better known as Seahawks fans) shouting and stomping loudly at the play they call the "BeastQuake." This past weekend, Lynch caused yet another touchdown-related earthquake or "BeastQuake"! When Lynch scores big, it a rainbow of Skittles showers the stadium as the fans throw Lynch his favorite treat or "power pellet," as his mama calls them.

But here's the secret behind all this. Marshawn Lynch and the 12th Man didn't cause those earthquakes near Mt. Rainer. A rabbit did. The extremely rare, highly endangered volcano rabbit whose gene pool is so depleted that this one lone volcano rabbit was born albino and not only that, he hopped a plane from Mexico City and settled down right inside the beautiful Mt. Rainer. It's just a coincidence that he is a Seahawks fan, too, and gets so excited when the 'Hawks score, like he did in this video. It's his celebratory snort and stomp which causes the Earthquake, not Marshawn. Sorry 'Hawks fans. It's not the 12th Man. But I guess you could call him the 12th Rabbit.

Sorry folks, I couldn't resist what with being a big Seahawks fan, and the whole BeastQuake thing. I promise I'll get back to business and get serious about this series, the Secret Voice of Rabbits. Promise! Until then,

Tread lightly,

-RP

See more of this issue's content. 

Prelude to The Secret Voice of Rabbits

▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄

Secret Voices of Animals and Math

Hello fellow rabbit lovers and animal lovers. It looks like publication is becoming more monthly. I think that is a better solution for this busy RabbitPhotog and her sidekick, social critic Thumper S. Thompson. We're very busy watching the waves of the future, you see, and picking out which ones of them we want to embrace in this particular rabbit multiverse. Handpicked parallel multiverses, curated for you by two very different, alternative personalities required to exist today in a totally schizo world full of gross injustice, social inequality, and speciesism. Hurrah!

Incredible New Technology

I wanted to make you aware of this new technology which analyzes the brain waves of dogs and uses some pretty heavy duty math to recognize the patterns and match them up to the thought involved. That's right. Hogwash, you might say but the technology exists right now to use thoughts to command machines through a computer interface. If you didn't know that, then you are behind the times. And it's beyond the scope of this one blog post to catch you up. But it's true.

Do You Hear What I Hear? 

And now a group of Scandinavian scientists are breaking a new barrier. But here, take a look at this ***ARTICLE AND WATCH THE VIDEO*** and then come back here, and I'll tell you how, as soon as I saw it, I knew they were about to change things forever.

Back? Ok, good. Now the part of the video when I knew they were really on to something was when they showed someone holding up one of those quote bubbles next to the dog's head and the quite was, "Who are you?" 

Many times, MagicMan and I will be sitting in our backyard on our swing while we are outside with our dogs to play fetch. Our brother and sister German Shepherds don't get along so they are never out at the same time. Our old collie mix, Macintosh and boy GSD, Rocky, come out together and then the girl GSD, Jessie, and her Schipperke mate, Felix, come out together. While Rocky and Mac are out, Jessie, whose inside waiting in her crate, will protest with sad howls until it's her turn to come out. Ever since we first rescued them, we have witnessed this drama. Jessie tries to imitate human speech just like the husky, Mischka, I told you about in a previous post. Correction, I shouldn't say she tries to 'imitate' human speech. I should say she attempts to enunciate English using the inadequate (for speech) muzzle of a German Shepherd. She does manage to get the message across though. She is clearly yelling to us, "I don't love you, I don't love you," over and over. You see, dogs live in the moment and when you appear to show favor to their rival, they don't love you at that moment.

Jessie's howls of this message sound sad rather than angry. And they make me sad to hear her declaring she doesn't love me. So as I throw the highly coveted Kong ball to her brother, I call back to her as imploringly as I can, trying to appeal to her higher dog self who is less jealous, "But Jessie, I love you and I love you so much and you know I'm going to throw ball for you next as long as you want. Don't you know I love you, Jessie?" Usually, she will start whimpering a little more softly and eventually stop with the harsh declarations of, "I don't love you!" And of course, then there are the times when she is about to come out to play and is loudly howling, "I love you! I love you!" which is great,

In this same manner, I have noticed after years of listening to the happy hour howl fest which goes on around our neighborhood, that the dogs are all barking a certain number of times, each which is a symbol for a word. They are barking I sets of four successive barks, "I don't know you! I don't know you!" much of the time as people walk by or a strange dog is being walked out on the street. But they also bark to each other quite regularly because they do know their neighboring dogs quite well. And that bark is just three successive barks, "I know you! I know you!" In days gone by, we had other dogs and other neighbors and those dogs all said the same thing. That's right, they "said" the same thing.

So do you think I'm nuts? Well, fine, I really am not worried about it, especially now since the folks at "No More Woof!" are going to prove I'm right. So if you do think I'm nuts, I suggest you enjoy your last days of ignorant bliss because, as Nostradamus said, "when the animals will be heard to speak," everything changes, everything.

And, yes, I have heard rabbits speak, too. So there. But I'll tell you about that later. Happy holidays and  Happy New Year.

Tread lightly,

-RP

 -RabbitPhotog

All content and images © Running Bun Magazine. Use without permission prohibited.

See more of this issue's content.

The Secret Voice of Rabbits

▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄

Nightmares and Parrot Wannabe's

Late, Like a White Rabbit

Hello again bunny peeps! It's me, RP, RabbitPhotog, and sorry for being so slow to get back to this series; The Secret Voice of Rabbits. I was getting ready to write this post right before Halloween but got delayed. So the day after Halloween, or rather on November 2, the Day of the Dead, or All Soul's Day, I had an eerie reminder to do it.

You see here at our little bunny photography studio, MagicMan (my photography assistant, rabbit handler, keeper, and spousal unit) and I noticed a long time ago that bunny rabbits love  movies. Oh, they love some TV shows, too, but mostly they love movies. They like the kind of movies in which the people talk to each other a lot. Not argumentative characters arguing a lot (although when done just so by top Hollywood talent, they do seem to love a good argument) but characters just having good, genuine conversations. One example is Miss Potter! But you know, we'll come back to that as I just know my esteemed bunny social critic, Thumper S. Thompson will want to weigh on that and he'd be upset with me for blazing any trails on that topic. So look for that down the road, folks.

A scene from "Miss Potter," (left) and Beatrix Potter's original pencil drawing from which this scene is taken.

So we have TV's with DVD players spread about the place so the bunnies can view some great entertainment. Mostly, it's horse movies like Seabiscuit, Secretariat, and War Horse, and literally a dozen others (after all, TST says horses are just really big bunnies!). But, as usual, I digress. The point in mentioning this was that on Halloween night, we watched a good Halloween movie, Fright Night. MagicMan likes it because he's a huge Dr. Who fan. Along with Colin Farrell, Fright Night stars David Tennant, who, MagicMan says played the best Dr. Who. I have to agree as I think he's probably the best actor to yet play that part.

 

The Scream

During Fright Night, as in any vampire movie, there's lots of screaming by the women victims. And then the night after watching it, we woke up in terror when we heard one if these screams right next to us! Imagine, we woke to hear a rabbit screaming! Rabbits only ever scream when they think their life is in danger, what was going on! I could tell it was coming from MagicMan's favorite little kooky, goofball buddy rabbit, Magic (yes, MagicMan's favorite bunny's name is Magic, coinkydink?). Was he having a nightmare? Did the movie we'd just watched the night before give him nightmares? We would never want him to watch anything that gave him nightmares!

No, Magic wasn't having a nightmare. He was wide awake when he let out his scream, although it wasn't a really loud one, a rabbit scream is truly loud and this was not. It was...almost like a mimic of a scream, a taunting type of sound. In his younger years, when he first came to us, this quirky little albino bunny did used to have nightmares and he did used to sometimes wake up screaming from those nightmares which, you can imagine, scared the bejesus out of us. So why was he taunting us and purposely scaring us?

A Rabbit Parody of Edvard Munch's The Scream

Magic had come from a very scary situation where someone had over 100 rabbits running around a small, suburban home breeding out of control. Almost all the rabbits taken from that situation were albino and the rest solid black as this is what happens with severe inbreeding. Many had parts of their ears missing as well, but for the most part, they were all in good health, probably because they were still pretty young. 

So here Magic came. He no longer had to fight over food with other rabbits, no longer had to fight over territory or anything. He has his own spacious custom-designed domain and a human who dotes on him like the way Tom Waits' character in Seven Psychopaths dotes on his albino rabbit. His nightmares lingered for a while after first coming here but then as he acclimated to the sound of several large parrots in the next room, the nightmares went away.

MagicMan and MagicRabbit cuddle on the bed.
All content and images © Running Bun Magazine. Use without permission prohibited.

In becoming part of a family of avid movie fans, he, along with the other bunnies, watched lots of movies and TV shows and was carefully desensitized to them. Part of my background as an animal photographer includes an advanced understanding of operant conditioning, i.e., animal behavior, so the bunnies were carefully desensitized to scary movies over time. Movies like The Lord of the Rings trilogy with the Orcs, Uruk Hai, and whatnot, were part of that program. This went beautifully and many hilarious stories arose from the experience. 

Of Mimicry and Puppetry

All the bunnies became quickly aware that there is a very real thing such as talking animals. Not only that, but the ones who talk, do so very loudly. And if you think parrots don't know what they're talking about, then I suggest you read up on Alex the African Grey and free your mind, man (as TST would say). Don't think that your bunnies don't know what's going on either. Just last year, the top minds in science declared that animals are as aware as humans. With that comes a certain species jealousy which develops when an animal is first confronted with an intelligent, vocal parrot. When one of my parents' dogs first met my then young Amazon parrot, and was greeted with a hearty "Hello!", the dog, a highly intelligent poodle, looked shocked, ran off and sat in the corner facing the wall like he would do whenever he was being ridiculed. I felt sorry for the little fellow as I could sense his embarrassment and shame for not having a mouth which could easily speak words. But there are dogs that talk, too, and quite well. Like Mischka, the husky. Maybe you've even seen Mischka in one of her TV commercials for a bank!

The bunnies are no different. They listen and absorb what's going on around them and try to tell us things. Little Magic bunny has told us a couple of times now that he does have a pretty good sense of humor, and that he is completely desensitized to scary movies but that he also knows we are not desensitized to scary bunnies! So he will, very seldom, scare the pantaloons off of us with a fake scare by mimicking a scream now and then. We've noticed it's usually a day or two after we watch a scary movie (as we are not in the habit of watching this genre) but then, again, maybe he's being a movie critic, of sorts, in doing this. Or maybe he just gets a big kick out of scaring us! We know he has a great sense of humor, as many rabbits do, because of the way he uses his ceramic pellet and water crocks to imitate our Tibetan Singing Bowls alarm clock if we haven't set it. Yea, and he knows exactly when it would have gone off if, indeed, it had been set. I digress again! The point is, Magic Rabbit is a pretty magical guy with a wicked sense of humor. ¹

The point is, rabbits scream. But they may not just scream when they think they're about to be killed. Sometimes, if they feel very secure in their environment, and if it's a very stimulating environment in which they must really exude their personality to compete with showy and show off parrots, they may scream just to have fun watching your reaction. Or, maybe it's to get even with those loud birds. Maybe. The birds all love the bunnies, and the largest of our parrots even used to have a bunny as a pet. The bunny would sleep every night in the bottom of the parrot's cage and the parrot would very carefully do his business in a far corner of the cage. He would toss her some of his pellets, too.

But that's another story for another day. In my next post in this series, The Secret Voice of Rabbits, I'll talk about just one of the secret things you can tell your rabbit to help the both of you make a much better bunny photo. And I still haven't even gotten to the part about their secret voices! All in good time. Meanwhile, I'm pretty busy bonding some bunnies right now so I know Thumper S. Thompson will step in here to pinch hit for me with another post soon.

Until then, tread lightly!

-RP


¹ "Anthropomorphism is a theory which presupposes its own validity." -Dr. Donald R. Griffin, Animal Minds

 -RabbitPhotog

All content and images © Running Bun Magazine. Use without permission prohibited.   See more of this issue's content. 

The Secret Voice of Rabbits

▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄

Preface 

So my colleague, Thumper S. Thompson, has lit a fire under my battooskie to get me working on a new blog post, my first post here on Running Bun Magazine. In my first post, I should unequivocably state that I am a hooman! Yes, that's right, there are hoomans involved with things here at Running Bun Magazine but only as much as is simply unavoidable. As an animal photographer of cute and fluffy beings (and of the occasional not so cute but still awesome being), I expect my little, and sometimes big, models to do their job, that is, to look cute. Their job is to arrest the camera and thus the viewer of the result.

Consider yourself under arrest. I mean really, the camera is like my Bobbie stick. I use it to capture and detain many widdle cyoot bunny rabbits who've run amok, all those irreverent lagomorphs out there marauding in the street, fields, and in our homes (yes, in our very homes right under our noses!) wanton, flagrant perpetrators of being criminally cute! It's must be stopped and I must stop it! And so I do; usually with f11 through f16, or so.

Magic Secrets Revealed!

I have a big black barrel, a Nikkor 18-200mm actually, and I aim it head on at those little twitching noses. They know when they see it that I mean business. I have a lot of help with the bunny shoots. First order of help comes from MagicMan, my rabbit herder, cat herder, and all around handy magician. Oh yea, and I'm married to him. He corrals the rascally rabbits for me and places them up on the shooting stage. I know it all sounds like one of those attractions at the board walk or carnival where one pays money to shoot at targets and win a plush toy. Guess this is kind of similar in that we, MagicMan and I, did pay a lot of money to do this shooting! There's about $10-12,000 worth of ammo, or studio photography equipment contributing to each shot! That's a lot of dough, ain't it? And we did it for free, free for the bunnies, I mean. Not free for us, we didn't make any money off their photo shoots at all...and we had to take care of the bunnies for a long time until they got adopted. Take them to the vet, pay for their food and lodging, fill the gas tank to take them to bunny matches, it just goes on and on. So can you blame us for trying to recoup some of that? We never really could but we're going to try and hope bunny peeps out there will have sympathy for us because we really blew a wad on them and there's literally nothing left for us.

After MagicMan rounds up the little bunnies and places them up on the shooting table, he bribes them with carrots, kisses, and papaya tablets. There it is! The secret! Yes, we really do use a carrot and stick to get a lot of these shots! But that's really only a minor part of the whole secret to a successful bunny rabbit photo shoot. There is a lot of animal communication going on. Also a lot of fear factor. Truth be told, at first the bunnies are all mostly terrified. Time was, almost every single studio shot we've ever done was benevolently presided over by a couple of large soft, peachy, pink parrots, our two fabulous Moluccan cockatoos, Happy Amadeus and Mrs. Mozart!

Mrs. Mozart sits only feet away from the shooting table.
All content and images © Running Bun Magazine. Use without permission prohibited.

That's only one secret behind our rock star rabbit photo shoots. In subsequent posts, the ones that I will write, not ones written by Running Bun Magazine Senior Writer Thumper S. Thompson, I'll tell a little more about each the many secrets behind a successful bunny photo shoot, ok? So y'all be sure to stop by regularly and check it out! Yea, but I guess those are the first two secrets; that I have a photographer's assistant helping me, MagicMan, and that I have a magician's assistant helping me, too, Mrs. Mozart, Moluccan cockatoo! I do really mean a magician's assistant too as Mrs. Mozart lived with a real, professional magician for the first 17 of her now 31 years and she brings much magic to the entire household here in this outpost of strange and wondrous things on the edge of reality! And, by the way, Mrs. Mozart is a rescue Moluccan cockatoo, as is her neighbor, Happy Amadeus.

And the secret voice of rabbits mentioned in the headline? What was that all about? The secret voice of rabbits is only partially heard through a type of morse code pounded out with their hind foot and the other part ever so softly heard with the feather soft up and down rustling of their whiskers through clock-like positions, each of which has very specific meaning. Their secret voice is a real, spoken voice. But it's so soft, barely audible, and the room must be so very quiet for it to be heard. No I'm not talking about their snort, or growl, or contented tooth purr. I am talking about their voice, about what I have observed as a result of living with both parrots and other animals and the species jealousy which parrots arouse in other animals when they shout out, "Hello!" That jealousy causes other animals to work with their mouths as best they can to also produce a garbled, "Hello" or some sort of audible sound.

I'll detail these stories in future posts, stories that read like those of Mischka the famous talking Husky of YouTube, or the many famous Siamese cats who are trained by their breeder to yell, "hello!" at cat shows, and so on. But that's all I'm going to say for now. (At least it should be clear why the heck I use an alias for me and my husband! Ha!) Follow me (said the white rabbit), follow this blog, and I will make good on my promise to reveal all of these secrets in time. If you were a true white rabbit of the rabbit cyber multi-verse, you could have already dug up all of these secrets, as they lie in wait, an excavation extraordinaire hidden forever in the labyrinth of the ether.

So for now the secrets revealed are that I have a second hooman helping me and that I have a former magician's assistant, a Moluccan cockatoo, blowing kisses at the bunnies when I ask her to calm the bunnies down. They're all scared of those huge parrots at first but then I tell Mozart, "blow kisses, Mozart, please," and she throws the sweetest kisses imaginable. If you know cockatoos, then you know they can sound sweeter than anything on Earth when they choose. And so, the bunny photos are proof positive of that.

Lighting setup is something else I'll discuss in future posts. And you might even see a video of a shoot now and then. Here's some teaser photos of my shooting table.

Tread Lightly.

RP

The shooting table or stage with 2 of the 5 lights visible.
All content and images © Running Bun Magazine. Use without permission prohibited.

Foster bunny rabbit Skennen waits for the barrel to load.
All content and images © Running Bun Magazine. Use without permission prohibited.

Foster Bunny Rabbit Skennen now a Rock Star Rabbit!
All content and images © Running Bun Magazine. Use without permission prohibited.

Oh, and by the way, poor Skennen here was a blue ribbon winning rabbit at a county fair one day. Later that day, his owner abandoned him and his brother, also a prize winner, at the county animal shelter. But we went and got him, got him neutered and then matched to a lovely French lop from Iowa and he continues to live happily ever after.

 -RabbitPhotog

All content and images © Running Bun Magazine. Use without permission prohibited.   See more of this issue's content.