Seoulscapade

Panda was well and truly becoming part of the family even at the time this picture was taken a few months ago. We’d gotten used to the bossy and domineering behavior, thinking it typical of your average male bunny. As these photos show, our bunny was relaxed and happy living out on our balcony.

A lot of stuff was getting chewed up so we had to be diligent at all times when Panda was inside the apartment. One day our Internet went out. We tried everything to fix it and got nowhere. As a last resort, we decided to switch cables around and use a wall socket in another room to connect to. It was then that we discovered that a cable had been chewed through, the part of it that is usually hidden behind a door. Later the same to one of our TV cables.

I’d read that getting a rabbit “fixed” would reduce the chewing behavior. It had to be done sooner or later anyway, so we visited the vet to get the obligatory “neutering” operation performed, with the belief that it’d take us no more than an hour. A complication, however, forced a change in plans. The vet got Panda up on a table with the assistance of a nurse, fiddled and around and announced to us that Panda was a she and not a he. Sunah looked at me; I looked at Sunah. How could this be? This was one tough male bunny, we’d always thought.

The complication was that the female operation was more involved and we would have to leave her there till the next day. We were worried about the stress of it all, and there was this cat that lived at the vets that alarm young Panda. An ordinarily long-haired cat, this one was shaved to the skin save for around its head, its feet and the end of its tail. It looked like it was wearing white fur boots. I was alarmed myself.

When we returned, the vet told Sunah that he had had to struggle with Panda before the operation, so much so that he thought he might have been mistaken about his judgment on her gender. She was fighting him so much, and with such strength, that he actually checked again to see that she was in fact a male. That was pretty funny, and I have to confess I felt a welling of pride.

She was wearing a plastic lampshade-shaped guard to stop her from biting her stitches, and we thought this was only for a day or two. Unfortunately, we had to keep it on her for over a week.

I saw what the vet meant some days later when we bought her in for a check up. We could watch though a window that looked onto the examination table. The vet was there grappling with her, each one of his hands holding each one of Panda’s hind legs, pumping them back and forward as if in a wrestling match. It was hilarious. Afterwards, the vet said that he couldn’t believe her strength, and that it was like wrestling with a little kid.

I thinks it’s because we allow her to roam on the balcony and often in the house. She’s been able to build up muscle, in a natural way. She hasn’t been kept in a bird cage as that lunatic taxi driver recommended the first night we had her (see previous post on Panda). I suspect vets in Korea are used to seeing rabbits that have spent a lot of time confined to cages, and therefore, have poor muscular strength.

Things were back to normal in about a week and a half, when we could take that plastic lampshade off. As as you can see above, behind Panda’s ears, we began raising all wires off the ground and securing those parts of the house, where yummy cables exist, defenseless against a roaming rabbit.

Panda having an exceptionally bad hair day.