Lessons I Have Learned

Before I tell you about the lessons I learned while raising rabbits let me give you a little background information.

• On April 8th, 2006 I bought my first rabbit. He was a young Rex buck so I named him Rex.
• On July 8th, 2006 I bought two young female Rex bunnies and I named them Flopsy and Mopsy

Now lets step forward a month to the date of my first major lesson: August 18th, 2006.

On this particular day the temperature was in the upper 80's. It was in the mid-afternoon when I noticed Rex jumping around and doing back flips in his pasture pen. At first I thought he was probable just playing but them my brain clicked and I realized that Rex had heat-stroke! "Oh no!" I thought as I hurried outside and quickly put some cool water in a bucket. I ran over to his pen and picked him up. By this time he had calmed down a bit. I carried him over to the bucket and gently placed him in the cool water. By this time he wasn't moving at all and then his head rolled over to one side limply. Then my brain clicked for the second time and I realized that Rex was dead! As I sat there with my dead rabbit in my hands my brother came and told me that Flopsy was lying dead in her cage also.

Lesson number one: rabbits are very subject to heat-stroke and if precautions are not taken to keep the rabbit cool (such as keeping the rabbit in the shade and/or putting blocks of ice in the cage with them) the rabbit will probably die. However, in the wild rabbits are not as subject to heat-stroke because they can crawl down into their burrows where it is cool.

The next major lesson I learned was about a week later when I went outside to check on Mopsy and found to my extreme surprise that she was gone! There was no floor in the bottom of her cage, so I weighed the possibilities of what may have happened in my mind and decided that she probably dug out.

Lesson number two: rabbits love to dig! So they need a floor on their cage.

Every action has a consequence and in these cases it caused me to lose my rabbits!

One of the best ways to learn is by experience. But no matter what happens we know that our sovereign God is in control of everything: "For the lot is cast into the lap, but it's every decision is from the Lord" (Proverbs 16:33)