The Romance Rituals of Rabbits
A Speed Date Gone Right, for Once
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Irwin and Ophelia 4ever
We recently watched our dear fur son, Irwin, give up his bachelor life to become the wife guy he was destined to be. Here’s how it happened!
Bachelor Bun
Irwin joined our little family last spring, stepping with trepidation before hopping with great enthusiasm into our hearts and lives. He snorts like a pig when he’s happy, treats human bodies like jungle gyms, and loves nothing more than a fresh sprig of mint. When he’s overcome with joy, he’ll parade around the room in circles, a stick in his mouth, head held high.
Rabbits are social creatures, and in the wild, they live in roving packs, teaming up to keep each other safe, snuggled and groomed. Although my partner L and I showered Irwin with attention and affection, we knew we couldn’t fill the bun-shaped hole in his heart. He didn’t just want to be groomed—he wanted to do the grooming, too, and since L and I were stuck in odd, furless flesh sacks, Irwin had taken to cleaning every inch of our blue velvet ottoman with his tongue. That’s when I started filling out application forms with the local rabbit rescues.
Bundr
After an incredibly thorough three-hour phone call (!!!) with the rescue, we booked Irwin in for an afternoon of speed dating. Yes, you read that right. A rabbit owner can’t just pick a second bunny to adopt based on their own preferences, throw them in with the first one, and let them work it out. Rabbits are incredibly territorial and they will fight viciously to protect their turf, even to the point of death. Bunnies are truly goth af. Thankfully there are tried and true methods to avoid this and encourage a successful pairing. The first step is to let the rabbit select their new companion.
When we got to the rescue, we put Irwin in a pen and gave him some time to investigate his surroundings. Once he was capable of focusing, a volunteer named Shay got into the pen with Ophelia, a shy bun hailing from East Vancouver. Ophelia’s foster parents described her as slow to trust, a bit of an escape artist, with a tendency to nibble everything around her (making it easy to confuse her with several of my exes.) Irwin was Very Curious about Ophelia from the get-go; she was more reserved. She didn’t, however, show any signs of fear or anxiety. After ten minutes or so, Shay put Ophelia back in her carrier, nodding with approval.
The next fuzzball to meet Irwin had previously gotten into a fight with another rabbit and was missing half her lower lip as a result. She spent the whole date cowering in a corner, mortally afraid of our lumbering doofus. Shay tried to reassure her, but nothing seemed to help. It became clear this bun needed more time to recover from her fight, and she was brought back to her her cage.
The third rabbit had barely been put on the ground when both buns began to hop side to side, lunging forward like boxers trying to land a punch. Shay recognized their aggression immediately and separated them. To our shock, in the heat of the moment, our sweet baby angel boy chomped Shay’s hand! He’d only bitten me once before, when there was a misunderstanding between his bad eyesight and my mango-covered fingers. L and I were shocked, but Shay waved it off. Rabbit rescue volunteers are hardcore, let me tell you.
After Irwin had some time to calm down, Shay suggested we put Ophelia in with him again. This time, having grown used to her surroundings, Ophelia expressed more curiosity about Irwin. She snuck up behind him to get a whiff of his backside without being detected. Irwin was interested in her more than he’d been with the last two.
Irwin and Ophelia were definitely vibing. And so, with a quick pit stop for emergency burgers, we brought Irwin and Ophelia home to start their life together.
Side By Side
For the first week, the two did not share space. Ophelia needed time to adjust to the sights, sounds and smells of her new home. We set up two cages in a mirrored fashion, so that they would be face-to-face when they ate or drank. We also put some cans of salmon down to keep the cages separated, so no noses or lips could be bitten through the bars.
Ophelia was extremely timid at first. Anytime either L or I walked by, she would run to the back corner of her cage and turn to stone. She didn’t want to take food from our hands or even eat in front of us, but when we put a blanket over her cage to give her some darkness and privacy, we would hear her chomping away.
Every day, we switched who was in which cage. This mixed their scents together, so that no one would become territorial. Since Irwin was accustomed to being a free roaming bun, we would open his cage a couple of times a day to let him run around. But he was so enamoured of Ophelia that, more often than not, he would stay put, content to spend his time gazing at his beautiful, mysterious new roommate.
No Humps Allowed
Let’s get this out of the way: rabbits love to hump. Not just a little bit, and not just before getting spayed or neutered. It’s how they sort out their social hierarchy, and boy oh boy, was Irwin raring to sort out their social hierarchy.
We wanted to ease Ophelia into this new relationship, however, so for the first week of face-to-face visits, L and I were the hump police. (Or the anti-hump police? Why do cops run for cancer? It’s all very confusing.) One of us would sit in the cage to intervene when Irwin starting mounting Ophelia. Although he was determined, his short attention span worked in our favour; we could redirect him without too much trouble.
During this time we’d also plop them side by side and pet them simultaneously. The rescue told us that this would trick them into thinking they were being groomed by one another, and would kickstart their affection. These five minute visits could feel extremely short or very long, but thankfully we didn’t see any fearful or aggressive behaviour. Just an overeager little fellow and a lady who wanted to take it slow.
Banana Head Time
It was a relief when we could start allowing Irwin 5-second humps before gently pushing him off—he slowly became less single-minded. It became clear that bonding them was a balancing act between letting them sort themselves out and intervening to make sure no one got carried away or overwhelmed.
This was also the week we put smashed banana on their heads. We were trying to encourage their grooming instincts to kick in, since grooming is an expression of affection that is more welcome than a sudden humpfest. (Perhaps we should put smushed banana on the heads of young people who go to bars.)
Unfortunately, Ophelia and Irwin couldn’t quite figure out what they were supposed to do, so we scrubbed their heads clean as best we could. It turns out that mashed banana works quite well as a pomade; both buns had a slicked-back hairdo for a couple of days after this experiment.
Ophelia Comes Alive
The following week, we saw some serious progress. We upped the hump length to ten seconds, and Ophelia realized that she didn’t have to let Irwin mount her. The first time she did a jump-and-twist, Irwin tumbled off her and landed belly up, legs flailing like an upside down turtle. Irwin may have been the dominant one, but Ophelia had youth, speed and energy on her side. She started having a more active response to his approaches, and the playing field started to level.
We also saw what started as a confusing interaction. Irwin and Ophelia would put their heads together, one rabbit would get startled and hop back, then return to their huddle, until someone got startled and hopped back, before returning again. At first, we were concerned that they might be biting each other—but if that were the case, why would they come right back? Eventually we figured out what was happening. Neither bun had had a furry companion before, so the only affection they were used to came from humans, who tend to be very gentle in their pets. Rabbits, however, have a nibblier, chewier approach to grooming. So one bun would ask for pets, the other would oblige, the first rabbit would get startled by the teethiness of it all and hop back, before realizing they liked it and coming back for more. We were witnessing their first attempts at grooming!
Memories of slimy teenage makeouts came flooding back to me, like the time I accidentally dropped a full wad of saliva into the mouth of my first boyfriend on a playground. Or when I shoved a full pack of fruit candy into my mouth right before my grade seven crush leaned in for an end-of-movie kiss. Ah, romance!
How Sweet It Is
By the end of week four, things were looking real sweet between Irwin and Ophelia. We started increasing the length of time they spent together and the amount of physical space they got for their dates. We also became more hands-off, seeing if they were ready to handle disagreements on their own.
The one thing we’d been waiting for, ever since banana head day, was a proper, full-on grooming session. The first time we saw Ophelia’s little pink tongue work its way all over Irwin’s stubby face, L and I nearly burst with parental pride. Before long, Irwin was giving Ophelia tongue baths, too.
The ultimate goal of a successful bond is for the rabbits to be able to peacefully spend all of their time together, and it felt like we were getting close. They were successfully free roaming together all day long, but the true test was putting them in the same cage overnight.
The night of our first attempt, I agreed to sleep on the couch so that I could intervene right away if a scuffle broke out. Good thing, too, because within thirty minutes of putting them to bed, I heard this grumble that Irwin saves for when he’s really, truly annoyed. I scooped him up and put him in the cage next door, and we had them spend another week of daytimes together without the pressure of a confined overnight space.
Soon enough, it was time for a second sleepover attempt. We put them in the cage together and I stayed up way too late, crying over the dysfunctional relationships in Temptation Island while telling myself I was “doing it for the rabbits.” Nary a peep came from their cage, and I drifted off to dream of televised tropical romances. When I woke up in the morning to check on the buns, I found them snuggled into each other, snorfling away.
That was that: Irwin and Ophelia became inseparable. For the first couple of weeks, they cuddled almost constantly. Now, they’ve settled into a comfortable routine: wake up, run some laps, harass humans for breakfast, sprawl out under couch for post-breakfast nap, eat some hay, nap, eat some hay, nap, chew some sticks, nap, run some more laps, harass humans for dinner, snuggle up to sleep. It’s been such a delight to watch Irwin fall in love with his fuzzy friend, and to witness Ophelia go from a scaredy-cat to a curious, mischievous, silly, happy girl. Now everybody in the house has someone to keep them warm at night.
Pet of the Week
Poppy is an 8 year old French Bulldog that’s full of sass and snuggles. She takes her job as a social butterfly very seriously and never hesitates to take off like a shot the moment she’s set free at the dog park. She’s most happy munching on a piece of cheese or snoring loudly in the sunshine on the lap of one of her people.
I want to feature a subscriber’s furry, feathered or scaled friend in every issue of Kier Here! Please email kier@substack.com with your name and a picture and short bio of your animal companion so they can be the next Pet of the Week.
Coming Up
I’m thrilled to announce that next week’s newsletter will feature an interview with Tara McGowan-Ross about her memoir “Nothing Will Be Different.”
Tara McGowan-Ross is an urban Mi'kmaq multidisciplinary artist. She is the host of Drawn & Quarterly's Indigenous Literatures book club, and a critic of independent and experimental theatre for Broadwayworld. Her poetry has been published in Best Canadian Poetry, and the collections Girth and Scorpion Season. Her debut book-length collection of nonfiction, Nothing Will be Different, was published in 2021 by Dundurn Press.
My interview with Tara drops Friday, July 8 at noon—cancel your plans so you can watch it hot out of the oven!
In the meantime, check out her newsletter, Theatre of Cruelty.
Kier Here finally cracked and joined social media! You can find me on Instagram, Twitter, and the park bench up the street from my house (no link for that last one, you creeps.)
Love is love, as they say. I see love all over this story and I’m truly delighted that Irwin and Ophelia have found companionship.