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Exploring Nature: A Home for a Bunny

child-made bunny home

My six-year-old daughter Emma desperately wants a pet, but Mike is allergic to everything. So she put together this little bunny house instead, hoping to catch a pet. She checked her bunny trap faithfully for a week, and no bunny appeared. But since taking it down we have seen a bunny in the back of our yard a few times. :)

Have any of you dealt with a child who wanted a pet but couldn’t have one? What did you do?

MaryAnne is a craft loving educator, musician, photographer, and writer who lives in Silicon Valley with her husband Mike and their four children.

27 thoughts on “Exploring Nature: A Home for a Bunny”

  1. I took my 7 year old daughter weekly to the pet store for a 30-60 minute visit. Eventually she got enough from holding the animals and stopped asking when the phase passed. Make sure it’s a small shop that will put up with this :)

    1. Thank you, Cherie! This is a great idea! Now to find a small pet shop nearby…

  2. Anna did something very similar on Sunday – she built “a cat house”. She is begging for a cat, but Lars is firmly against this idea. I think we’ll lobby harder in a couple of years, since I want one too.

  3. Hmmmmm… that’s a good question. I went to visit a friend in Chicago a couple years ago. When I returned home, I found we had a new pet bunny. Seems Christian had caught a wild one, and wanted to keep it, but Hubs wouldn’t let her. So he went out and bought her one.

  4. That is so cute! How about a fish or a few fish? My sister has neon tetras and they are pretty active. We have a beta and he’s boring. LOL!

  5. That bunny house is so sweet – I can’t believe it didn’t have any takers. We can’t keep domestic animals where we live and I know we will have the “I want a pet” dilemma soon. I’m hoping to persuade that it is better to take care of animals in their natural environment but I’m not sure how that is going to fly. Still not a pet you can cuddle up with. Maybe Emma could research what rabbits like to eat and plant a rabbit garden that she keeps a shallow dish of water next to. It might be a way to get that lone bunny to bring some friends. Of course if you keep your own garden the rabbits might not realize that it is off limits!

  6. We gave in, that’s what we did. I put off a dog for so long but now that we have him I couldn’t imagine life without him. There are some breeds of dogs that are hypo-allergenic I believe, worth looking into.

    1. My parents have a dog that is doubly hypoallergenic – I’m hoping Mike can hang out around him, and then maybe we could get one like him. He’s a very nice, smallish-medium-sized dog.

  7. That is too cute! My kids are constantly asking for pets but they just don’t fit with our traveling lifestyle. I grew up with way too many pets, so the thought of them doesn’t excite me at all.

  8. I could go on and on about this topic. In fact I recently wrote a blog post about the trials and tribulations of kids and pets that you can read here http://www.growingplay.blogspot.com/2012/04/trials-and-tribulations-of-kids-and.html. As a follow up to that post, the hamster actually escaped yesterday but quickly was caught. More classic memories made thanks to our pets. I am still laughing about the whole incident.

    Two comments:
    We live in upstate NY – obviously very cold winters and our two rabbits live outdoors year round (husband is also allergic). Our vet told us rabbits actually do better outdoors. We cover them up quite a bit in winter but they are fine. They have lived outdoors for three years now.

    I know she wants something to cuddle with but two of my children have their very own fish. They enjoy keeping it in their room and caring for it. Very easy pet and when you go away you just put in those automatic feeders (cheap and feed up to a week).

    Good luck. I am a wimp and cave quickly to the pet question.

    1. It’s so nice to hear that a rabbit could be a real option! Definitely time for me to do some research…

  9. Elisa | blissfulE

    The bunny house looks so welcoming! Would Mike’s allergies allow for a rabbit hutch in the yard? (I guess that wouldn’t work in the winter where you are, though…)

  10. Heather@Creative Family Moments

    That’s too awesome that a bunny appeared in the yard the next week! The no pet thing is hard. I knew someone who was allergic to everything so they got a toad. I have a serious aversion to crickets so that wouldn’t work for me. During the years we couldn’t get a pet, our children built up a zoo of stuffed animals. We also went to a petting zoo A LOT.

    1. We need to make the most of petting zoos while the weather is nice. Thanks for the reminder!

  11. Would fish work? A turtle? Ant colony? Caterpillar (until it turns into a pupa)? Or something else without fur? My kids are desperate for a pet too. But we’re not having a pet now for various reasons – it would be like a fourth child, and my hands are full with three small children already. And we don’t think the kids are (together) anywhere near ready for the responsibility of caring for a pet yet. Also, we travel to Singapore and up north to visit family ever so often, and plan on doing a lot more traveling, and don’t want to have to leave a pet with someone or a kennel. We’ve made cardboard pet-containing things for those bad days when they were particular desperate, like a bunny hutch, an aquarium, dog kennel and a vet clinic. Also we make trips to the nearby pet store to spy on their live pets and dogs being groomed. Someday I think we will get a pet, but not for a while yet.

    1. I think she wants a pet she can cuddle. Maybe I can find a way for a rabbit hutch to work in Massachusetts winters?

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