Gizmo Loves Breakfast

Welcome to my world!  As you may know, being owned by a pet has its ups and downs.  Mostly ups.  For those who love bunnies, have them or enjoy hearing about them, I will be posting related stories.

Mornings at our house are all about getting organized, fed and dressed for the day, not necessarily in that order.  What's the most important meal of the day?  Breakfast, of course.  Who can live without breakfast?  Not I, and not Gizmo.

Rabbits are crepuscular, meaning that they are most active in the morning and evening.  You can think of these active periods as rabbit happy-hours.  In the wild, they would be creeping softly from their warm burrows, sniffing and listening for danger, munching down on whatever tasty vegetation they could find.  Gizmo is a house rabbit with a nighttime hutch and free roam of the downstairs family room during the day, but he still observes the rabbit niceties.  He is up at first light, impatiently pacing until breakfast is served by the goofy oversleeping house-people he lives with. 

His sensitive bunny ears first detect feet hitting the hardwood floor in our 50 year old house, then the creaking and popping of movement upstairs, the flush of a toilet, the thumping of drawers being opened and closed.  He is quivering with anticipation.  Then he hears the fwump, fwump of me coming down the stairs in bare feet.  Aha!  It is time!  Bring on the chow!

I unlatch his door and attach his access ramp so he can roam around.  He does not immediately spring for the door however.  He knows what is coming.  I fill a small scoop with rabbit pellets while Gizmo sits up and practically dances on his hind legs.  Hurry up!!! He seems to be saying.  As I bend in to fill his bowl, he practically shoves me out of the way with his fuzzy head.  Okay, okay already!  Once Giz has his head in the pellets, nothing will move him short of a nuclear blast.  I can pet him, tickle him, groom him... he will not budge. That boy knows how to commit. 

After a few minutes of petting, I drag myself back upstairs to get everyone else ready for the day.  By the time I get back downstairs 30 minutes later, all the pellets are gone, and Giz is sprawled out on the floor in bunny digestion ecstasy.  This is much like watching your fat Uncle Pete after Thanksgiving Dinner, discretely unfastening his belt and the top button of his pants while watching football on the couch.  If rabbits could burp (they can't), I'm sure I would hear him give the prolonged belch of a seasoned frat boy.  He eyes me with affection, allows a few more pets in the sprawled out mode and twitches his paws.  To quote Charlie Brown, he's very satisfying to cook for.