Babies!

Eden's rabbit, Blue, had her babies last Saturday.  Her due date was Friday, but she showed no sign of giving birth or of even being pregnant, so I was starting to worry that she wasn't.  But Saturday morning, as I held her on my lap, I could feel little jabs and pokes in her sides, and by Saturday afternoon she was very busy building a nest, which included moving hay around and ferociously pulling out her own fur!

And then, when she actually gave birth, Eden and I were fortunate enough to witness the whole thing.  She suddenly stopped pulling fur, jumped into the nest box, made three grunting sounds, and then stuck her head under her belly and starting licking and chewing.  Eden and I couldn't tell how many babies she had had (or was having).  We saw two for sure.  But after about ten minutes Blue jumped out of the nesting box and calmly hopped over to her food bowl and started munching away.  Left behind were six tiny, hairless, eyes-closed, little bunnies!  They were adorable!  It turns out that mother rabbits only nurse their babies 1-2 times a day, and they spend the rest of the time away from their babies.

This is a terrible picture (we had a heat lamp on, so the light is all red), but it gives an idea of the size of the babies.

This is the babies at about three days old.  They're all still alive -- yay!

Eden has chosen names for all six, although we of course have no idea which one is which.  Their names are Traveller, Piksie (Eden's spelling), Hazel (from Watership Down), Spots, Cottontail, and Hufflepuff (Puff for short).