Living rural in the city is great – you can do it, too.

Category: Pets and Farm Animals

I’m not using the term “livestock” even though, yes, on farms, live animals are profitable inventory. Livestock usually implies that they’re going to go to market to be slaughtered and turned into food themselves. While small farms can be wonderful places even when that is their objective, and I support that, it’s not my objective. I like animals alive and appreciate them that way.

Hervé the white rabbit

In November, 2013, I posted the following:

Ringo’s Lost poster

I  want to show you the new rabbit that entered my life. Like all my pets, he came to me through the rescue route. It was a few weeks after I lost Ringo (I will always be upset, I’m sure he was kidnapped or worse, and I put a lot of effort into finding him). Early one morning, a couple found a white rabbit in the middle of St. Antoine Street, just a few blocks away from me, near Georges-Vanier metro. They contacted Secours Lapins Quebec, who isn’t a shelter and can only network for rabbit rehoming. They gave them my poster to see if it was Ringo, but it wasn’t. The couple asked me to take him in anyway.

He is young, friendly, full of energy and curiosity, and he’s got a big appetite! It took a few weeks, but his name arrived: Hervé. Here he is on his Gotcha day!

One great thing about Hervé is that he actually likes being in the front yard, and his willingness to stay influences Kaori and Elizabeth, the girl bunnies, in a positive way. I’ve a lot fewer “escapes” – visiting the neighbours, or hiding under the car — than before. They then get to stay outside for longer.

He’s really fearless, actually. On Hallowe’en, he wanted out in the evening — no way! — and so was hanging around the front door. Kids came by to trick-or-treat, and he was trying to get into the bowl of candy. He taught Elizabeth to go explore the bedrooms upstairs. Naturally, he attacked a few houseplants this way, and cut down a stem of the ficus tree into a stump. I don’t know if it’ll recover (it took awhile, but it did).

He also humps my girls. They take it (most of the time) in the most unperturbed way possible. Girls can be worse for humping, as it’s a dominance activity. They’re all really happy together.

Kaori, Elizabeth, and Hervé

Update, December 2023

It is with sadness but satisfaction for me to report that Hervé has taken his final journey to the Rainbow Bridge. He was with me these past 11 years through a lot of adventures (trips taken!) and changes (a roster of bunnies, past and present). He was an unflappable bunny. While he sometimes seemed indifferent to me, he really wasn’t. He was a great companion to the other rabbits, and after his first energetic year of getting into everything, he was never any real trouble.

I got Parker in 2015 and he’s such a docile little boy, but Hervé had to assert his authority. As soon as their hierarchy was established, they became best buds – with the occasional flex, from time to time. For example, in 2019 I ended up taking Parker to Boston with me while Hervé The Bossman stayed behind. The end of that summer separation was actually a joyful reunion; Hervé being by himself for a full five weeks tempered his attitude. (It wasn’t like he was really attacking Parker, either – just being Hey You, I’m The Boss Of You all the time.)

After Willa came in, she integrated herself with Hervé and Parker, and it was such a lovely arrangement, until Parker went into hospital. As soon as that happened, Willa broke her bond with Parker, and became a total beeeyotch to him (way beyond I’m the Boss, more like I Hate You). Willa looooooved her husbunn Hervé, but Hervé was still friends with Parker, so she sensibly respected the afternoons that Hervé spent with Parker on the main floor. Downstairs was their territory, so she’d defend it against Parker. Not just against Parker either! As Hervé aged, if anyone gave Hervé attention whilst on the floor downstairs, Willa would rush and box them: “Don’t touch him, he’s MINE!”

Of course, this didn’t put any damper on me petting Hervé, because Hervé loooooved to be pet. Here’s part of the “bunny sitting” instructions:

Hervé’s decline

But age comes for us all, and in the case of rabbits, Hervé got dental spurs. He ended up on long-term antibiotics and, this year, a recurring under-eye abscess. He also got head tilt, and that eventually became exacerbated from an internal dental abscess. This meant, in his last few months, he could only perambulate in circles. It took me a little while to figure out that when he was most anxiously circling, it was because he needed to use the litter box.

Of course, he also became incontinent with old age, so I’d have to give him butt baths. At the very end, these past few weeks, taking him off antibiotics increased his quality of life, because it restored his gut flora – which meant his cecotropes arrived on a schedule he could handle, and he essentially stopped needing to get out of his own way (fewer butt baths). He needed more physical support to be comfortable, buttressing him with blankets and companionship. Increasingly, he slept the day and night away. I’m sure the abscess did his brain and neurology no favours. He was very patient with (yet still protested!) my draining and cleaning his under-eye abscess with a syringe and catheter of saline solution, twice a day.

He’d had a good appetite and sweet disposition all throughout his decline, but the helplessness was real, and I didn’t want his end-of-life to become harrowing. I took him to bed with me for the last week to give him the body heat and support he needed, and for the first time in his life, he groomed me.

And so on December 1, I took him and Parker up to our long-standing vet in Laval, Dr. Woodlock. I wish I’d let play the music box they’d had playing in the room, but the tinkly lullaby started me crying (toughen up, Jane, it’s not about you). In the dim quiet of the room, sitting cross-legged on the floor with the bunnies in my lap, we bid a peaceful goodbye. First we gave him a sedative to send him off to dreamland, and ten minutes later, the euthanasia drug. Parker groomed both of us.

Then we put Hervé’s body in a burial bag to bring home. It was a long metro ride home, and then downstairs, I opened the body bag in Willa’s presence. I left them like that for a few hours, so that she would get used to the idea that Hervé was gone. And then, come dusk, I buried him in the back yard.

Hervé was a happy rabbit, and he made many other people happy too. Let’s remember him like this:

And remember, as well:

How cracks in my asphalt driveway revolutionized my life

If you’ve been to this blog at least once before, you’ve probably seen photos of my green driveway. And yet every year, just like before I put it in, some contractor dude who’s thinking “that ain’t right!” drops by with a card to “fix” it. (I can’t blame him for pounding the pavement looking for clients, but still…).

Sometimes he even jots a quote on the back as to how much it would cost me to rip out my green driveway and put down some blacktop asphalt driveway. You know, my green driveway cost a little more than what he’s quoting, because it was kinda fancy underneath, but I won’t have to “repair” the crack every five years like he wants me to. No, thank you.

I used to have an asphalt driveway. About the only thing you can do on an asphalt or concrete driveway that you can’t do on mine is play basketball. And maybe make chalk drawings, but you know, the sidewalk’s right there, so that’s no biggie.

See, for a long time I had cracks in the driveway where plants would grow. That’s why they’d wanna repair it. But why would I let that crack bother me? Water percolating into the soil and being taken up by plants actually cools the air through transpiration.

“But frost heaves!” – it’s a driveway, not a highway; a little bump from a crack is not a problem.

“But bigger cracks!” More plants!

Why would I want black top + hot sun make my driveway and home hotter, rather than something cooling it down?

Besides, when the plants were growing in the cracks in my driveway, guess what the bunnies’ favourite outdoor snacks were? That’s right – CRACK SALAD!

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Labour Day weekend: The Eastern Townships and Brome Fair

I went to the Eastern Townships for Labour Day weekend to get a good hike in at Mont Mégantic (I also visited Lac Mégantic for one of their evening benefit shows at Musi-Café, the bar that was blown up during the train derailment in August). This was the view, in the distance, of the nearby village Nôtre-Dame-des-Bois from a lookout point on the way up Mont St. Joseph. The road seen is the access road to the park.

In La Patrie, where I was staying, the bunnies decided the most familiar and comfortable place to hang out was under my car.

Look at that relaxed rabbit. Just look at her. Punk.

In a Sherbrooke parking lot, this lovely plant was blooming and a bumble bee was fertilizing all of its flowers. I would love to know what the name of it is, and I’d like to get some seeds (I later was given the plant. The bees loved it, and it took over my backyard, but I was able to remove it all ).

This, I later came to learn, is Himilayan Balsam, and though it’s very pretty, it’s very invasive.

Back in Stanstead,  cows doing what hippos do, in an over-fertilized pond. Don’t drink that water, girls!

After taking the Vermont route through Derby Line and Newport up to the Quebec border at Mansonville, I finally got to the big Brome Fair at Knowlton.

I took many pictures of the home canning, gardens, baking and crafts section, but here is one category I would like to enter in next year: the mixed garden basket.

Two harvest baskets in competition at the fair

I would also like to enter the category for best Jamiroquai chicken, but chickens are not allowed in Montreal (except Rosemont) and I’ve already got my hands full with the aforementioned punks. Here are a few pics I took, but I have to say, the photo quality is terrible, and you really ought to see them in person.

Some more birds I’d like to be in possession of, especially with my miniscule woods-and-pond:

I’d like to enter the punks in next year in the general “Rabbits and guinea pigs” category, just because I can, but I don’t think they’d like it very much. I found a very very large and sleepy Holland Lop. Now I know what breed Elizabeth is at least half of!

When I was a girl on the farm, we once got some fertilized eggs for our pet goose. She hatched three white geese and three African geese, like these:

The sheep section was interesting to see — some in full wool, some recently shorn. Some so recently shorn, they had to wear little suits to be comfortable and protected.  Here’s a sheep with a very relaxed demeanor:

And two more, a different breed, who look quite curious (or hungry and waiting. Please keep your hands out of their pen. Management not responsible for nom-nom injuries.)

Here’s a cow and calf from a Charolais beef farm:

And finally, an Ayrshire from a dairy farm. I find it interesting that the cartography of her spots seem to depict the limits of the sovereign seas!