I’ve never had rabbits before.  In Australia rabbits are considered vermin as they plague the Australian landscape.  They were introduced via a Victorian governor who brought a male and female over from England for his nieces.  They escaped, of course, and Australia has been riddled by rabbits ever since.  So naturally I’ve felt a heavy responsibility in keeping rabbits as I don’t want them to escape and plague Norway too.  But the answer I got to this was ‘If they escape, don’t worry, they won’t survive the Winter’.

Oh.  Well, my focus has shifted now.  Instead of protecting Norway from the rabbits, I’m now protecting the rabbits from Norway.

“Kanin” is the word for rabbit in Norwegian.  Caramel and Chocolate, just two months old, were collected from a small breeder in Lakselv, (a good two hour drive from Alta).  The breeder was a teenage girl who bred the rabbits for a bit of pocket money.  The rabbits don’t have any special breeding but they were the only ones on offer in all of Finnmark so we thought we’d get these for practice and fun.

They are both female (we think) so no chance of breeding but the practice will be primarily for me to get to know the character of rabbits.  At first I thought that they would be a great play animal for the kids but the little bunnies are way too delicate for clumsy hands.  So when the kids are tucked in bed at night, Moose and I let loose the bunnies in the living room to romp around and get ‘socialized’.

The rabbits are very gentle and like to smell feet.  They like to touch you and hop on you but only on their terms.  Their poop is very clean (in fact, they eat their first round of poop and leave the second – almost like how a cow chews cud) and the bunnies don’t smell at all.  They are very adventurous and like to run.  I’m starting to think that a small regular cage won’t do for them.  The bunnies are most happy when they can hop, dig and run around so we plan to come up with a house or system that will allow them to embrace their ‘rabbitness’.

But these rabbits certainly do have a purpose – petting zoo, lawn mower, breeding and meat.  Everyone has to earn their keep on the farm.