More Weather, Andy the Spider and introducing Barney Rabbit

For those who happened to read my blog post yesterday today has begun as a miserable wet winter’s day. During the night we got a MONTHS worth of rain in about five hours and some of the snowfields have an early sprinkling of white powder. Yesterday I witnessed some of the most amazing and dramatic cloud formations I’ve ever seen! They were definitely an omen for the weather we’re getting today. The weather down under is nutty at the moment.

Poor Andy had a long night, just looking at him now and I can tell he’s miserable. His web is littered with rain drops and every time there’s a strong gust of wind he has to brace himself. It’s a shame that he’s so exposed to the elements, but I guess he could be in a worse spot. Maybe I should write a story about him...

Now, you must be thinking I’m lame to name (ha! that rhymed) my rabbit Barney because Barney rabbit sounds like bunny rabbit. But the truth is that never crossed my mind, he just looks like a Barney kinda rabbit. It was my uncle who picked up on the correlation. Actually his original name was Aladdin, which brings me to the sad but funny story of how I came to own him.

A few years back, on Easter day my gorgeous New Zealand white rabbit, Penny died of cancer. She was the most affectionate and smart animal I’ve known, but to know that what killed her could’ve been prevented if we’d gotten her to the vet sooner will haunt me for forever. I’d loved her for six years and the sudden loss of her hit me and my mum pretty hard. So one cloudy Sunday a few weeks later we decided to go to a local rabbit show. As my mum and I were walking around we came across a dark charcoal coloured show rabbit sitting in a cage with a for sale sign. The little guy instantly stood up against the wire cage to greet us. Naturally we both went, “Awwww, aren’t you cute,” and rewarded him with a pat. We moved on to watch some of the competitions, but every now and again my mum went back visit the little charcoal bunny. Soon enough we’d both grown an attachment to him, and after much arguing and a consultation with my dad we finally decided we should buy him. We were informed by the little girl who’d owned him that his name was Aladdin because they had a female rabbit called, yeah you know, Jasmine. As much as I thought that was cute, it hardly suited the little fella. When we got him home we let him out in the kitchen and were astounded by his curiosity and friendliness. For the rest of that day we got him settle in his new home and talked about names. A small list was compiled that consisted of; Cadbury, Buster and a few other generic names, none of which appealed to me (I’m very fussy when it comes to naming pets and characters). Then out of nowhere I thought of Barney and I knew that it would suite his playful, curious and clumsy nature.
Five years on and he’s still the same pretty boy bunny we fell in love with who treats us like a rabbit family and is spoiled more than anyone else in the family. Right now he’s relaxing in the kitchen and demands my attention no matter what I'm doing.
So that's the story of Barney rabbit