I have come to the conclusion that Roman can either access the internet and read, or understand English.
The reason for my theory is that a couple of days ago, I blogged about the grief our bunny was causing us when it came to getting him to bed at night.
As well as writing that blog post, Claire and I have also been discussing how we are going to deal with any bedtime antics in the future.
While I remain off work following my scooter accident, Claire is also absent from her job, although she is not off sick. Due to the ongoing risks to my health from COVID-19, my wife and I are both having to follow government guidelines on shielding. With laws being relaxed, it is inevitable that she will be back at work in the not too distant future.
How does all of this affect Roman? When Claire is at work, an evil alarm clock wakes her up in what I regard to be the middle of the night – which in fact, it is shortly before 6am.
Shielding from coronavirus has meant that the morning alarm has shown some compassion of late, remaining silent until owl, fox, badger and all the other nocturnal creatures have put themselves to bed.
With all this in mind, Claire and I have been somewhat relaxed and tolerant of Roman’s bedtime defiance, safe in the knowledge that there will be no horrendously early wakeup alarm.
When the time comes for my wife to drop the shield and return to work, the early morning call will return. This will mean that playing ‘Catch the Bunny’ at half past eleven is not feasible.
We have discussed – inadvertently within earshot of Roman – that because of his poor behaviour, he may have to return to his cage considerably earlier than normal, or worse… spend the entire day locked up!
Given the high levels of intelligence held by our gifted rabbit, I suspect that he either read my recent blog post, or overheard our evil plans to keep him incarcerated, and hoping for us to have a change of heart, decided to improve his naughty behaviour.
Either way, we can’t complain. Roman has put himself to bed without a battle, for two nights running.
What are the chances of him becoming a demonic beast this evening?
Poor Roman has been behaving rather strangely these past few days. I wouldn’t say that he is off his food, but he is off his food!
He normally devours his lunch and evening meals, but we found him to be very picky with what was placed in his bowl.
It was time to investigate what the problem was. We needed the veterinary skills of James Herriot, the detective prowess of Miss Marple, and the culinary know-how of Fanny Cradock.
I’VE ALWAYS KNOWN ROMAN TO BE ONE TEET SHORT OF AN UDDER.
Romy had not eaten his nuggets – small dried pellets, easily mistaken for rabbit droppings – for a few days. He then stopped eating his fresh vegetables! That’s when we got worried.
Detective Claire and I came up with a theory that there may be a problem with the nuggets. We considered the possibility that they had turned bad. Interestingly, the bag containing his bunny food had only recently been opened.
If the nuggets smelt or tasted like they had gone off, there was a strong chance that Roman would not only avoid the offending pellets, but also anything they had come into contact with – e.g. fresh vegetables.
This is a natural survival instinct possessed by many animals and presumably held by rabbits, which allows them to identify and avoid potentially harmful sources of food.
I have the same ‘detect and avoid’ instinct, when it comes to identifying the presence of parmesan cheese…
With this theory in mind, Claire prepared Roman a bowl topped with the finest vegetables Tesco could provide, as well as the juiciest carrot tops the farmer who lives near to my mum, could pull from the Somerset soil. It was a dish fit for Peter Rabbit himself.
Romy tore into his meal, devouring the fresh produce in record time. The poor creature must have been ravenous. I felt a tad guilty for even contemplating the idea, that the reason he had failed to eat all his food days earlier, was that he was only prepared to eat treats.
Realising that there was something off with his nuggets, we were very much relieved to see that our rabbit had found his appetite. However, it was clear that to maintain his health, he couldn’t live off leaves and hay alone. He needed his dry ‘grains’.
The only thing we could give him was toast. As with the carrot tops, he jumped straight in, making his treat disappear – had he devoured the offering any quicker, it could have been a magic trick.
ROMAN THE MAGICAL BUNNY.
Not wishing to risk giving Roman more nuggets he dislikes, we avoided purchasing another bag of the brand he had, up until recently, been happily enjoying his entire life. We believe that it was worth considering the possibility that the recipe had changed, resulting in one very hungry, hot cross bunny!
After doing some research, I discovered and ordered a brand of nuggets very similar to the ones Romy had once liked. If he did accept these, it would be great for Claire and me too, as this type can be bought from Tesco and Amazon. The previous lot were only available from Pets at Home – a shop difficult for us to drive to, and with one of the worst websites I have ever seen from a business.
Fast forward to the next morning… we went downstairs to find Roman looking very unwell. Understandably, both of us were extremely worried about our little fur baby. He took little interest in his surroundings and only managed a few nibbles of toast – that is when we knew things were bad! Claire and I were seriously on the verge of ringing the vet for an emergency appointment. Luckily this was unnecessary, as things improved…
The new nuggets arrived promptly that same afternoon. While slightly apprehensive to begin with, Roman slowly took a liking for his new food – so much so, that when he was given a generous portion for lunch, he made short work of his meal!
YUM YUM, IN MY TUM!
I am tempted to contact Pets at Home to see if any ingredients have been changed in their own-brand rabbit food. If I do email them and receive a response, I’ll let you know.
Perhaps calling them would be a better idea?
“Hello! Pets at Home? Yes, I’d like to speak to the manager, please, and quick about it!
Sean!
No, he doesn’t but he bloody-well will shortly!”
After Roman’s Sunday tantrum, where he ate part of a carpet and caused no end of trouble; Claire and I thought that he would be better behaved yesterday – especially as we would both be spending the day downstairs and keeping him company.
How wrong we were…
Roman had probably been in his run for less than an hour, when, upon entering the front room, we saw to our horror that he had started a repeat of his bad behaviour from the weekend – destroying and consuming carpet!
He naturally received a stern telling off, which seemed to curb his craziness. The little shit ended up sulking and grooming himself – disproving the theory that you can’t polish a turd.
Roman has never behaved in this manner before. While he can be grumpy from time to time, the last couple of days he has been borderline psychotic!
I now have a theory to explain all of this…
As a treat, Roman is given dried mango twice a day. He goes absolutely crazy for the stuff. The bunny has a good appetite at the best of times, but will devour this tropical treat faster than any fresh vegetable, nugget or other dried fruit.
Mango is considerably sweeter than any other morsel he may be given. I remember an occasion when Roman was allowed to run around our front room, shortly after I had eaten a doughnut.
Bits of sugar from my Krispy Kreme (only the best for us) had fallen onto the Leeds United rug beneath my feet. Normally this would be cleaned up, but for whatever reason – probably Roman demanding he be let out – this time it didn’t happen.
When Romy hopped over to see his human daddy, he seemed very excited. He had clearly discovered the remains of my doughnut, and was licking it all up, before we could stop him.
It was clear that our rabbit had a sweet tooth. It’s not as odd as it may sound. Many years ago, I had a bunny named Sparky (after the dog on South Park*), who ate chocolate cake. She only tried cake once, and the bit she did eat, she had stolen from me.
* South Park fans with a good memory will recall that Sparky was Stan’s gay dog. Sparky the rabbit was a birthday present for me. My mum promises that the pet shop told her that she was buying a male rabbit. I therefore thought it was amusingly ironic how my other pet rabbit, Snowy – also a boy – kept trying to mount Sparky, whenever they came into contact. A couple of months later, I found out why, when I discovered a pile of baby bunnies.
I hope you enjoyed that sub-story. Two blog posts for the price of one and all that. Now back to the madness of King Roman…
The fact that Roman was eagerly lapping up each and every grain of doughnut sugar told me that he had taste for sweet things.
This sweet tooth of his, would also explain how he would go wild for dried mango. It even suggested to me why he had been acting insane the last two days.
Sugar is addictive. If you were to eat a sweet treat at the same time every day, your body would feel physically and mentally unwell, should you ever stop consuming it.
A day or two before Roman’s first outburst, we had stopped feeding him mango treats. This wasn’t a punishment. The dried mango we had for him looked poor quality, and we didn’t want to make him ill.
My theory is that this lack of mango and the associated sugar, was responsible for all the recent trouble.
Claire and I have already decided, that if mango has such a bad effect on our rabbit, he won’t be getting any again… ever. This may sound harsh, but we wouldn’t be responsible bunny parents, if we fed him something which could impact negatively on his health.
We also both love him very much – despite calling him a “little shit” on my blog – and would like him to live a long, healthy life.
He will simply have to go cold turkey, until his body has recovered from the sugar. It’ll be hard on our boy – I should know, as I have experience of drug withdrawal… I’ve seen it on Trainspotting.
Sorry, Rome. At least you’ve still got your dried carrot – until we discover you’ve developed night vision.
Yesterday, Roman behaved terribly. He did something awful – most definitely the worst thing he has ever done.
Instead of blogging about it in my normal manner, I decided to go all creative and write it in the style of a proper, real, grownup author. Which means it’ll be even more rubbish than usual.
When choosing which author I should imitate, for telling my tale of Roman, I did consider Stephen King. It would have certainly been appropriate considering what he did!
Instead I decided to rip-off the work of a lady who died almost 80 years ago. If by a miracle – and it bloody well would be – this crap gets published, I can’t get sued.
Here is Roman’s story, told in the style of Beatrix Potter… although expect more Brian Potter.
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THE VERY NAUGHTY BUNNY RABBIT
ONCE upon a time there was a little bunny rabbit, and his name was Roman. He had a grey and white coat; and would hop and skip around his room and entertained his human parents.
BUT one morning Roman’s mother – Mrs. Claire Nose-Twitchin – had to leave the house for the day; so fetched Roman into his exercise run, to be fed and given a drink, before going outdoors herself.
FIRST she would let Roman hop from his cage into his run.
THEN she prepared a delicious dinner for him.
THEN she gave him a piece of apple as a treat. Roman was very naughty, and he snatched the fruit.
MRS. NOSE-TWITCHIN tidied up his toys; and then she made what Roman thought was a terrible noise by using the vacuum cleaner.
ROMAN was very messy and yesterday had kicked his droppings everywhere. His mother cleaned these up with her Dyson.
WHEN Roman’s run had been prepared, Mrs. Nose-Twitchin prepared herself to leave the house; for she had to be at work, and did not wish to be late. To Roman, she said “Goodbye!”, before telling his father – Mr. Sean Nose-Twitchin – that it was time for her to go.
SADLY, Mr. Nose-Twitchin was unwell. He had to remain upstairs, and had been told that he must not leave the house, because he could become rather unwell if he caught coronavirus.
ROMAN’S parents and their friends did not know where coronavirus had come from. Roman and all of the other animals knew that the virus had been given to Mr. McGregor’s cousin in China, after he put their friend David Batty in a pie and ate him!
ROMAN hopped happily around his run. Occasionally he would run through his cardboard tubes, as if he was being chased by a fox or a veterinary nurse.
AFTER a short while, Roman lost interest in his toys. “Where have mummy and daddy gone?” he said to himself. Roman could hear what sounded like talking from upstairs. Mr. Nose-Twitchin was listening to one of his audiobooks. As Roman neither knew or cared what an audiobook was, he began to feel angry.
ROMAN was quite unable to escape from his run or stamp his foot loud enough for his father to hear.
HE was left with absolutely no choice but to destroy his exercise run. Roman knew that if he was to shake the bars of the run with his teeth, one of his parents would appear. Sometimes they would be angry with him, and on other occasions they would stroke his head and neck.
ROMAN shook the bars of his run shake-rattle shake-rattle shake-rattle-rattle! He did this with such strength and for so long that he began to give himself a headache. By this point he was furious. He felt like Mr. and Mrs. Nose-Twitchin were ignoring him and his need for attention.
WHILE there were difficulties in getting noticed by anyone, he knew that there was one way in which he could always get his mother and father to listen. Roman told himself that if he was to eat the rug within his exercise run, somebody would come to see him.
ROMAN did not enjoy eating carpet. It tasted horrible and made him feel rather sick. His mother and father were always very angry when he did this and would shout. Normally Roman would not like this but today he did not care.
UPSTAIRS, Mr. Nose-Twitchin was in the bedroom and heard Roman making a terrible noise downstairs. Tug-a-tear tug-a-tear tug-tug-tear!
LUCKILY, Roman’s father had a very nice mobile telephone – a Samsung S10. When Roman was a very little bunny, Mr. Nose-Twitchin had placed a webcam downstairs so he could spy on him.
ROMAN had seen the webcam on the wall, but did not know that his father was using it to look at him; he also did not know what a webcam was. This is because he is a rabbit and there are many humans more intelligent than rabbits. Sadly, Watership Down is not a true story.
MR. NOSE-TWITCHIN was able to use his smartphone to connect to the webcam. Once he had seen that Roman was eating carpet, he became very worried. Mr. Nose-Twitchin shouted at Roman to stop what he was doing,
ROMAN had heard his father’s cries, but as he was a very naughty little bunny, he continued to eat more of the rug! Nom-nom nom-nom nom-nom!
BY this point Mr. Nose-Twitchin was scared. He sent a message using WhatsApp to Roman’s mother telling her everything that had happened. Mr. Nose-Twitchin’s new smartphone was so clever that it could even be used to make telephone calls. He rang his own father, Grandad Nose-Twitchin to ask for his help.
GRANDAD NOSE-TWITCHIN was quick to climb into his motorcar and drive from his Bristol burrow to Roman’s retreat in Bath. He was careful not to get seen by any police officer. Boris the Bull had told all humans to remain in the safety of their homes, to avoid getting the nasty coronavirus. Had Grandad Nose-Twitchin been caught by the police he would have been fined! That would cost Roman many weeks of pocket money to pay.
I AM sorry to say that by the time Grandad Nose-Twitchin arrived in Bath, Roman had a bad tummy ache. He had stopped rug munching and sat in the corner of his run, not feeling very well. Despite feeling poorly, Roman was excited to see his Grandfather and ran up and down his run as if he had forgotten all about his bad stomach.
ROMAN was sent straight to bed and left in his cage all day and night. He didn’t feel very well and wished he was a rabbit in a Beatrix Potter book where he would have been given camomile tea. Unfortunately for Roman, the only tea kept by Mrs. Nose-Twitchin was PG Tips; and as we all know only monkeys drink this type of tea.
AND despite behaving like a mischievous monkey, Roman remains very much a rabbit. A very naughty rabbit.
THE END
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A little pressie arrived for Claire this morning.
The gift, arranged by yours truly, was delivered by a courier who, instead of ringing the doorbell like a normal person, bashed our door as if they were a police officer executing a raid on a drugs den.
As startled as Claire and I were by the assault on the entrance to our home, Roman was terrified. His fear only escalated when my wife answered the door and collected her surprise – a bouquet of heart-shaped balloons.
There is a saying – “Every day is a school day” – presumably because we learn something new during each 24-hour period. Today I learned that rabbits are petrified of balloons – well, our bunny is.
Roman hated the present I bought for Claire. The balloons were placed in the corner of the front room, slowly moving in the air.
Presumably, in the eyes of our furry little cherub, these strange and scary foreign objects were monsters. Hungry monsters with a taste for rabbit meat.
After a failed attempt to ease Romy’s fears, by moving the floating predators into the kitchen (he spotted them through the windows on the door), calm was restored when they were dragged upstairs to the bedroom.
There is now a significant risk that Claire will trip over the balloons in the dark and end up joining me in the Broken Bones Club; but at least our pet rabbit will be happy…
About Me
So you stumbled across my blog. No doubt after searching for something bizarre on Google. Before you hit that 'Back Button', why not stay and have a read for a few minutes?
If you are after a website which gives advice on how to hack an iPhone X, download the latest Steven Seagal movie, or view nudy ladies, you've come to the wrong place and may now press 'Back'.
However, if you would like a lifestyle blog, written by a 30-something chap, living in Bath (England), feast your eyes on this.
You won't discover how to copy PlayStation 4 games. What you will find is a blog, covering life in the West Country, the highs and lows of supporting two unsuccessful football teams, while sharing a house with a wife and rabbit.
All written by a man, somewhere on the sanity-scale between normal and eccentric.
