My Black and White Bunny

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tooooo cute to be true, i could melt and die from the bunny cuteness burning my heart out!



xoxox

On An Impulse : BUNNIES!

I am a 100% sucker. For fur, for fuzzy, for scared, for adorable, for baby animals...
I went to our local Farmers Co-op today to pick up some hay for JuJu the donkey, but when i got inside the building to pay there was a cage next to the counter full of little rabbits! The signs on the cage said were that they were "meat rabbits" and also "just in time for Easter"?? I didn't care, all i knew was i was going to take the two cutest ones home with me. Not for meat. And not for Easter.

The little solid black bunny was greatly loved by the woman at the check out counter who put them in a box for me and walked the box to my truck just to send her loving goodbyes to the terrified fuzz muffin. (Although she was incredibly sweet on the bunny, she made some off putting remark about naming it "little sambo"--- i always find this word to be racist. )

The black bunny is most friendly, the spotted one likes to thump his foot, zip around and send me signals of fear and loathing.

....

Even though in recent times i have started to lose the illusion that I am somehow saving animals from a worse fate (cause mainly how can i judge the fate of nature, really?) ... but still there is a part of me that wants to take all the animals home with me, love them all, make them all comfortable, make it so they have a peaceful life. Maybe it's a biological/maternal thing, they are all my babies , I really just can not help myself!

...

What would ya'll like to name the two bunnies? (NOT sambo (explained above)! and Salt & Pepper has been suggested!)

Xoxoxoox

Eco Art: Earth Clay & Rabbit Poo Part 2

This is NOT a big cookie ya'll! It's just more clay and rabbit scat.... and that's not chocolate chips I stuck on top there either, it's broken glass. But doesn't it look delicious, huh ? :)

I am loving making stuff out of the clay in the ground by my house and with rabbit poop! Only problem is I have run out of rabbit poop since I was just finding it out in the field (I don't have a rabbit.) I may have to walk down the road to the sheep, goat and Llama farms and ask for poo... will be a great way to meet some neighbors. ;)

I got a cool idea from Bort when he brought me some small circular hanging ornaments he had made from similar materials (sand, clay and horse dookie), but he had pressed glass into it! I really loved the look and idea so that is now the style I am working on.
All the materials for this project were utterly 100% FREE (as in no $ money $ spent) and no chemicals what-so-ever are involved. The glass was collected for recycling and was broken into pieces. Since I don't have any sand on hand to use, this project is considered COB and not POTTERY. (Thanks Panne for explaining the difference!)

Whatever it is, it's gonna be pretty when it dries solid and i can wipe off each pretty piece of glass! So far it sat over night and did not crack. The small places where i could tell it was pulling the day before I made sure to watch closely and fix early on.

YAY for earth friendly art!
XoXoxox

DIY:Rabbit Poo & Earth Clay Pottery

I get really excited when I think about making any kind of art supply/craft with stuff right outside my house for free, earth friendly & simple. So when I was told I could make some pottery with dried rabbit poop (alternately bone dry horse or cow poop) and some clay-ish soil dug from the ground I could not wait to get my hands on this project! So here is the 100% natural, chemical free, and old world process I tried out ::::

Gathering Supplies:

You will need to find some kind of super duper dried up poop of a grass/plant eating animal - and some dirt. The more hard clay the dirt is the better and easier to begin with. Sand can also be added to this project but I didn't have any, so I tried it without.

Gathering rabbit poop takes a while cause it's not exactly huge, but I knew a spot in a open area where I'd seen bunches of scat and tried filling up my can.... You'll want as much as you can get cause the more the poop the more malleable the clay will be.
Then I went to a spot I had found some clay a few inches under the black soil, it was a yellow/tan/brown colored clay.

Setting Up A Work Space:

I took a bench and set up a pile of the clay on a piece of wood I could knead the clay on, a plate of water for wetting the clay, and the rabbit poop to be crushed/powdered.
The Process:

I put the rabbit scat in a bowl and took a rough stone to crush it into a powder. The poop has to be super dry for this to work good.

In mortar and pedestal fashion, the poop will become a powder that you will need to add bit by bit to the clay.
I added it in slowly, kneading in the rabbit scat and water to keep it wet. The clay-ish dirt went from cracking and hard to work with to becoming a slimy traditional clay that was easy to shape and play with. More poop seems to mean more awesome!
Just like store bought clay, ya gotta roll it, mash it, move it, work it over and over to get it the right consistency. Also working out air bubbles.
I added water to keep if from cracking often... (i wonder if the sand would help with binding it together also???)
Pretty rad, right? Went from dirt in the ground to a ball of clay ready to be the whim of human imagination or functionality.
I decided to make a small simple coil pot, starting with a round slab - I didn't want to get in depth till i learned out the clay would work and dry...
Coil pots are jus' rolling out little snakes, and coiling them upward...
Then you can smooth the coil together with wet hands, to make the sides flat.
YAY! little pot. Tiny pot! Poop pot! Lovely pot!
I played around with making marks on it too with my knife (see below).

THE NEXT DAY:

So the next day my pot was rock hard, and I don't think it was even nearly all the way dry. First I am experimenting with sun drying, and then I would like to later throw it on a fire and hope it doesn't explode. But there was a problem already..........
It freakin' CRACKED on tha' bottom. shit. . . . . Nothing a little more clay can't fill in though.
What'dya say, that this DIY eco art project is a 90% success and 10% fail ? Seems 100% amazing to me regardless of the end result.
And, it still looks good from far away. ;)
Xoxoxox

Animal Tracking: Down The Rabbit Hole

There is still one tree left that is dropping apples - and I am not the only one who is gathering them! Yesterday I knelt down the gather a bag full up apples for some potential apple sauce, I could see that deer had been there amongst other critters nibbling the fruit too. When I leaned forward to grab a nice dark red apple I saw rabbit scat (poop) in three piles right ahead of me.
The scat was obviously fresh and from my point of view I could see a well worn thin trail...
I followed the trail carefully looking for more evidence, after about 10 feet of winding i found a half eaten apple. :) It was freshly eaten within a 1-2 hours, the apples falling wild from the trees turn brown really fast once open.
Then next to some rocks i found more apple bits, but these much were older. Possibly the rabbit's compost pile. ;)
And there was the hole... where the rabbit stays! Awwww, cute.
What an awesome place to live!
XOXO