Carrots are bad for rabbits, RSPCA says - Telegraph Pets Health Carrots are bad for rabbits, RSPCA says The sight of Bugs Bunny chewing a carrot is among the best–known images in cartoon history, but root vegetables are in fact bad for rabbits. Rabbits do not naturally eat root vegetables, cereals or fruit, and iceberg lettuce can be dangerous. Carrots and apples are high in sugar and should be an occasional treat Photo: ALAMY Follow Many pet owners interpret the character's favourite food too literally and risk giving their rabbits tooth decay and other health problems, says the RSPCA. The charity said owners were mistakenly using carrots and other salad foodstuffs for rabbits' staple meals, adding that just 8 per cent of owners knew what to feed them. Eleven per cent of pet rabbits suffer from tooth decay and 11 per cent have digestive problems, according to research at the University of Bristol commissioned by the charity. "Bugs Bunny was wrong," said Rachel Roxburgh, an animal scientist for the charity. "We want all pet rabbits to be eating hay as their main food. People also think their rabbits should eat carrots because that's what Bugs Bunny does.

"But he's a cartoon, real rabbits don't talk, and they shouldn't be eating carrots too often either." Related Articles Project MUSE - God and Bugs Bunny God and Bugs Bunny Stephen Miller (bio) The headline for an article in the Times Literary Supplement reads: "The Self You Choose." The article concerns how the poet Thom Gunn tried to find a new identity in part by changing his given name from William Guinneach Gunn. Can we really choose a self? Though we can give ourselves a new name or even change our sex, we are always chained to our ethnic identity. I will always be of Jewish descent. I could ignore my ethnic heritage, dismissing it as inconsequential. Or I could brood about it, as Philip Roth often does in his novels. Or I could embrace it. The brother of a Jewish woman I know has three sons who have a strong sense of their Jewish identity, but each has chosen a different way of celebrating it. One is a secular Jew—interested in Jewish culture but not observant. Another is a Reform Jew—that is, observant but only mildly so.

The third has become a Hasidic Jew—choosing a very strict and demanding version of Judaism, immersing himself in a world filled with Jewish rites and rituals. It is unlikely that I will choose any of these Jewish identities; I'm in my sixties and haven't chosen one of them yet. Though I have not tried to hide my Jewish heritage, I've more or less ignored it for the last forty years. Yet the Jewish component of my identity cannot be gainsaid. "Memory," a writer in the Economist says, "is central to the question of 'who am I?'" I have many memories of my Jewish childhood. The main thing about my Jewish childhood is that for the most part it was not very Jewish. My parents never went to services, and they never followed Jewish dietary laws. When I was growing up I often had bacon for breakfast and occasionally ate ham and cheese sandwiches for lunch. My mother, whose parents were Orthodox Jews, tried halfheartedly to observe some Jewish rites. On Hanukkah, a relatively minor Jewish holiday, she made latkes (potato pancakes) and put up a menorah to commemorate the eight-day holiday.

On the first night of Hanukkah we said a prayer when we lit a candle, but when I became a teenager this practice stopped. [End Page 256] My parents also halfheartedly celebrated Passover. Jews are supposed to substitute Passover dishes for their regular dishes. We did not do that, but we did not eat bread during the Passover holiday. And on the first night of Passover we went to a seder given by my mother's sister and her husband. They were Reform Jews who kept a kosher household. I found this religious celebration a chore. I was bored by the obligatory reading from the Haggadah—the Passover prayer book. Year after year we read the same stories, uttered the same prayers, asked the same questions, and heard the same answers. I tried to read the passage assigned to me as quickly as possible. The faster I read, the sooner we would eat. I also had mixed feelings about my uncle. I liked to talk to him because he was an educated man—a leading public-health official who had a master's degree from mit . But I could see that he disliked my father, who was a traveling salesman with an eighth-grade education.

Though my father could try anyone's patience with the same corny jokes every year, he was my father, so I did not like the expression I saw on my uncle's face when my father was talking. In one respect, however, I was a very traditional Jewish kid: from the age of ten to thirteen I went to Hebrew school for two hours three times a week. I feared the military-looking Israeli woman who was our teacher. She would rap your knuckles with a long pointer if she thought you had not prepared for the class. It was not painful, but it was humiliating. My strongest memory of Hebrew school was the moment after class when I opened the door of the dark and dank Hebrew Institute of University Heights in the Bronx and rushed into the street. I would hurry home to get in a game or two of stoopball, boxball, or stickball before dinner. In the three years before I was bar mitzvahed, I rarely gave any thought to religion except to wonder why Jews were called the chosen people. What were they chosen for? I also remember thinking that people who were religious seemed to suffer as much as people who were not.

The father of a girl I knew was an observant Jew, but he died in a fire in his office. It was obvious to me that there were many evil people in the world. In the New York Post, which I began to deliver when I was eleven (earning enough money to buy a bike), I read about murderers and thieves. [End Page 257] I generally avoided fights when I was a kid, but once a tough-looking kid walked up to me and punched me in the face. He said I had insulted him, but I hadn't said a word. I don't think he punched me because he thought I was Jewish. An American-born Israeli says that when he was a kid in Chicago he thought his first name was kike. I don't recall anyone calling me that. The literary critic John Gross, who grew up in a Jewish household in London, says, "I never suffered on account of being Jewish, never felt that my future was hemmed in, never endured either literal or metaphorical blows." The same holds for me.

I knew about anti-Semitism in general, and I knew that my grandmother hated Romania, which she left when she was seventeen, but I knew very little about the Holocaust, a subject that was rarely discussed in the decade after World War ii . A Jewish refugee from Poland was a boarder at an aunt's apartment. He had lost all his family in the Holocaust. The few times I talked to him he was cheerful and friendly. The only time I experienced anti-Semitism was many years later in a dry cleaners in northern Virginia, when a teenager working there said to another teenager that her boss "Jewed" her down on her salary. "You know," I said, "I'm Jewish." Embarrassed, she apologized. To be bar mitzvahed I was supposed to attend Saturday-morning services. I resented going because my parents never went. While I was fitfully paying attention to the long service, many questions crossed my mind. Why did God need to be praised so much? Why was God so cruel at times? Why were the women in the synagogue separated from the men? The main emotion I felt while sitting on the hard wooden pews was boredom. All this chanting and praying and singing was a waste of time.

Yet I liked the sound of Hebrew and the shape of the Hebrew alphabet. And I enjoyed some of the Hebrew songs, snatches of which remain in my mind though I have not sung them for a half-century. After a few months of attending services, I rebelled. I told my parents I went to the synagogue, but I actually went to a nearby movie theater. I loved Westerns and cartoons, especially the characters in Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies: Bugs Bunny, Sylvester Cat, Tweety Bird, Daffy Duck, Elmer Fudd, the Tasmanian Devil, and Yosemite Sam. I loved hearing Yosemite Sam say "varmint" or Tweety Bird's saying "I tawt I taw a puddy tat." [End Page 258] My favorite character was Bugs Bunny. I never compared Bugs to God, but I realize now that I liked Bugs and I didn't like God. Bugs always joked with his enemies; God had no sense of humor. I could understand what made Bugs tick, but I could not understand God. How could anyone be omnipotent—a word I learned in the eighth grade when I had to sing in the chorus of Handel's Messiah?

"For the Lord God Omnipotent Reigneth." God was a mysterious and forbidding force, but Bugs was a cool guy—like some of my friends. He was a wise guy and he was fearless. And he never cried. Like most boys I knew that one should never cry when one got hurt. It was okay to yell in pain, but crying was out of the question. After my bar mitzvah I refused to go to the synagogue on Saturday mornings. My mother didn't object to my decision. She lacked the traits that are often ascribed to the "Jewish mother." She never tried to make me feel guilty about anything. My mother was more educated than my father, having finished a year of college. In her twenties she had traveled widely and lived for a few years in Washington, away from her family. Unlike the middle-class Jewish women of her generation, she worked most of her life. When I was five or six, she worked half-time; a few years later she began to work full-time. The last job she held was the secretary to head of nursing at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital. She had a wide circle of friends, including several non-Jewish friends.

Thinking about my mother, I ask myself, does the notion of a Jewish mother make sense? I have known many Jewish mothers, but only a few of them have had the traits Jewish mothers are supposed to have. I read about a one-woman play called 25 Questions for a Jewish Mother. The author, who interviewed more than fifty Jewish women of varied backgrounds and ages, says Jewish mothers "feel a need to protect and be in touch with their kids." Don't non-Jewish mothers have the same feelings? If Jews often speak of Jewish mothers, some also make much of Jewish guilt. Writing about the Jewish literary critic Alfred Kazin, another critic (also Jewish) speaks of "a burden of guilt derived from … [Kazin's] Jewish heritage." The critic doesn't explain what this burden of guilt is. Why should Jews feel more guilt-ridden than other people? Joshua Halberstam, a contemporary writer on Jewish questions, thinks the notion of Jewish guilt [End Page 259] is absurd: "There is no credible empirical evidence … that Jews feel more unwarranted guilt than others." According to Halberstam the Jewish-guilt syndrome is the invention of assimilated Jews.

When Jews became "untethered and estranged from Jewish tradition and the established forms of explanation, they created a psychologized specter of guilt as a 'Jewish condition.'" This is plausible but unsubstantiated. My mother was untethered from Jewish tradition, yet she did not suffer from guilt or try to make others feel guilty. My happy-go-lucky father had no sense of guilt whatsoever. Jewish fathers are often described as tough-minded responsible souls who work hard to ensure that their children get ahead. In American Pastoral Philip Roth says that the father of the main character "was one of those slum-reared Jewish fathers whose rough-hewn undereducated perspective goaded a whole generation of striving college-educated Jewish sons." My father was reared in the slums of the Lower East Side of Manhattan, but he didn't goad me into doing anything. When I was growing up, I spent very little time with him because he was often on the road, selling a wide variety of products to gift stores: English bone china, greeting cards, Belgian enamel cookware—you name it. He had a bad temper, so he lost more jobs in a month than most Jewish fathers lost in a lifetime.

My father had a hard time making a living as a salesman, but he was not remotely like Willy Loman, the lugubrious salesman of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman. Like all the salesmen I knew, my father was resilient and upbeat. He was a gregarious joke-telling guy who called most women doll. He loved to talk about cars, and he loved to watch boxing matches. After dinner he would watch a boxing match—or, if that wasn't on, a baseball game. Or he would read the want-ads with a red pen, underlying things he might want to buy. He was always looking for a deal. Sentimental about his extended family, my father sent birthday cards to at least twenty relatives. At family visits my father would play the piano and sing songs. He had some musical talent, but he did not have the discipline to develop it. He was an impulsive man who would buy a piano, take lessons for two months, then sell the piano. Six months later he would buy another piano. In his mid-sixties my father went into business for himself. He rented [End Page 260] a used-car lot in a rough neighborhood in Passaic, New Jersey.

He would buy $200 cars at an auction and sell them for $400 or thereabouts. His slogan was Rely on Eli, which is amusing since he was not a reliable person. He was always showing up late or getting lost or arguing with someone about something. Worse, his cars were unreliable—not only the ones he sold but the ones he bought for himself. Like Jewish mother and Jewish guilt, Jewish values is a popular term. A letter I received from the World Jewish Congress begins, "I believe that you are someone who shares our rich Jewish values." Values is a notoriously fuzzy word. A leading romance novelist says that "strong family values are … important, and I do not hesitate to write them into my books." Are family values the same thing as Jewish values? I have no idea how to answer this question. In any case, the values of my non-Jewish relatives and non-Jewish friends are no different from the values of my Jewish relatives and Jewish friends. Some Jewish observers argue that Jews keep a sense of their identity by eating Jewish food.

Shona Crabtree, a journalist who writes about religion in America, says that "food is profoundly yoked to the Jewish faith and heritage." Matthew Goodman, the author of Jewish Food: The World at Table, agrees: "Food is very powerful for me in a way that certain prayers might not be." Goodman, who calls himself a "proud secular Jew," argues that eating certain foods strengthens his sense of Jewishness. "Food is a very durable purveyor of tradition," he says. "People continue to cook the foods of their ancestors long after they've stopped wearing the dress or the clothing of their ancestors or speaking the language of their ancestors." During Passover I usually make matzo bry for myself. It is a dish made of matzo soaked in water, then fried, and mixed in with eggs—a kind of fritter. Does making it strengthen my Jewishness? I don't think so. My Jewish identity is fading, but I still like most of the food I ate when I was a child. It is unlikely that eating Jewish food will preserve the Jewish community in the U.S. Many Christians enjoy Jewish food. Jewish secularism is a century-old movement.

According to Jonathan Sarna, the leading historian of American Judaism, at the turn of the twentieth century many secular Jews believed "that religious practice was less critical to Jewish preservation than [End Page 261] shared experiences and values.… They looked to these common denominators—which collectively came to be known as Yiddishkeit, or Jewishness—to unify and preserve Jews, even as the formal practice of religion came more and more to divide them." John Gross says that "being Jewish hardly began and ended with religious belief.… It entailed a whole complex of other considerations as well—loyalties, affinities, cultural legacies, folkways, habits of mind." When I read that Jews have certain affinities, "folkways, habits of mind," I have no idea what these writers are talking about. One hundred years ago, when immigrant Jews in America (and probably in England as well) had only limited contact with the Christian world, one could speak of distinctively Jewish qualities, but nowadays many Jews—secular or religious—have become mainstream Americans who move easily between Jewish and non-Jewish worlds. What about Jewish feelings?

In Philip Roth's The Facts there is the phrase Jewish feelings, but it is hard to know if Roth is endorsing this notion or ridiculing it, for the person who speaks of Jewish feelings (and also Jewish fixation) is not Roth. It is a woman who is quoted by Zuckerman—a character in several novels by Roth. In his autobiography Zuckerman comments on Roth's autobiography. He says, among other things, that in his "first few pages" Roth appears "to be more preoccupied than ever … with the gulf between gentile and Jew." Is Roth, by way of Zuckerman, criticizing himself for making too much of his Jewishness? What about the term Jewish writer? Just as most writers who are practicing Catholics do not like to be called Catholic writers, so most writers of Jewish descent do not like to be called Jewish writers.

Lionel Trilling once said, "I do not think of myself as a 'Jewish writer.' I do not have it in mind to serve by my writing any Jewish purpose." And he added, "I should resent it if a critic of my work were to discover in it either faults or virtues which he called Jewish." Yet Trilling also said, "My existence as a Jew is one of the shaping conditions of my temperament." One wishes Trilling elaborated on this remark, for it is not clear what he means. Jews have a wide variety of temperaments. I'm skeptical that Trilling's awareness of his Jewish descent shaped his temperament. Trilling, [End Page 262] it seems, wanted to have it both ways; he is not a Jewish writer, yet deep down he is a Jewish writer. II Jewishness, it strikes me, is an elusive notion.

According to James Kugel, a leading scholar of the Hebrew Bible, "the cliché about Judaism is still true: it is not so much a religion as a way of life." Jews, he says, are supposed to keep their covenant with God by being observant; Jewish Living is the title of a magazine that is meant mainly for observant Jews. I have never been an observant Jew; but, when I went to college in 1957 most of my friends were Jewish, and soon I joined a Jewish fraternity. Yet a year later, when I started to read a lot, my ties to the Jewish community weakened. I began to associate with people who liked to read. Some were Jewish, some were not. I soon quit my fraternity. At Yale, where I spent a year in graduate English studies, I dated many non-Jewish women. I had a three-year relationship with a divorced graduate student who was an observant Episcopalian. She took me to my first church service. I was nervous because I didn't know what to do. Should I kneel when everyone kneeled? Should I pray when everyone prayed?

A few years later I married a Protestant of Hungarian descent who, like me, was also a graduate student in comparative literature at Rutgers. Though she was only mildly observant, attending church irregularly, our two children were baptized, and we celebrated both Christmas and Easter. Christmas is still a major family event. In early December my wife and I drive to a Christmas tree farm, where I lie down on the ground and cut down a Christmas tree, so that we have a fresh tree in our living room. One anecdote may suggest how far I have traveled from my Jewish childhood. A decade ago I was sitting at my desk in Washington, D.C., when I remembered that I hadn't seen an old friend for quite some time; I phoned him to see if he was free for lunch. "Sorry, I can't make it today," he said. There was a pause. "Steve, do you know that today's Yom Kippur?" I had totally forgotten about the holiest Jewish holiday. [End Page 263] Why did my connection to Judaism fray so badly? It was mainly because the connection was weak to begin with. According to a sociologist of religion, a child's religious beliefs usually reflect those of his parents.

I drifted away from Judaism because my parents were nonobservant Jews. What remains of my Jewish identity? Perhaps only one thing: I worry about the fate of Israel. Older Jews, a writer in the Washington Post says, "remember the dramatic founding of the state and see Israel as a key piece of their Jewishness." When I was a child all Jews—observant and nonobservant—were excited by the founding of Israel. I was required by my Hebrew school to collect money for the new country. I knocked on neighbors' doors and rattled my blue and white tin can: "I'm collecting for Israel. The money will go for planting trees in the desert." According to a survey by the American Jewish Committee, about three-quarters of American Jews agree that "caring about Israel is a very important part of my being a Jew." Yet what does my concern about the fate of Israel mean in practical terms? If Israel were attacked tomorrow, what would I do? I might join a demonstration, write my congressman, give a donation to a Jewish charity. Many unobservant Jews keep their Jewish identity alive by worrying about Israel, but many also nurture their Jewishness by remembering the Holocaust.

According to the American Jewish Committee three-quarters of American Jews also think "remembrance of the Holocaust" to be either "extremely important" or "very important." In his memoir New York Jew (1978) Kazin calls the Nazi war against the Jews "the nightmare … that will haunt me to my last breath." I don't question Kazin's anguish about the extermination of the Jews, but he belabors the point, as if he feels compelled to tell the world that he is a good Jew because he thinks continually about the Holocaust. Kazin's sense of Jewishness, Robert Alter has said, is "peculiarly disembodied." For Kazin being Jewish means belonging to a guilt-ridden people who are condemned to suffer.

Reviewing New York Jew, I wrote that "Kazin's Jewishness quickens into life only when he thinks of the Nazis.… The land of Kazin's Jewish mystique is a uniform vale of tears, a land peopled only with obsessed grieving Jews." Yet in his journal Kazin writes that many Jews are obsessed with the Holocaust: "Holocaust, [End Page 264] Holocaust, Holocaust.… The Jews [who] were once held together by God are now held together, or should I say scared together, by the Holocaust." Talking about Kafka, his favorite Jewish writer, Kazin says that the Jews "were just a people accused [emphasis Kazin's], as of old; a people whose only mission was to feel guilty." Jews, Kazin implies, can't avoid suffering. Reminiscing about marital quarrels, he says, "We fought like the cornered Jews we were." Are Jews in America cornered? I don't think so. Kazin was forever trying to solve the puzzle of his Jewish identity. "I love being Jewish," he said, "but I pursue my own way in these things.

I'm an Emersonian and always have been." Kazin, like Trilling, wants to keep his Jewishness, even though it has no content; it is pure mystique. Some Jewish observers find it disturbing that many Jews shore up their identity by dwelling on anti-Semitism in general and the Nazi war against the Jews in particular. Ruth Wisse, a professor of Yiddish studies at Harvard, says that when McGill University (where she once taught) began offering courses on Jewish history, literature, and philosophy, these courses had far fewer enrollees than the course on the Holocaust. Wisse often puts the term Holocaust in quotation marks because she thinks it turns the extermination of the Jews into a mythic quasi-religious event. What do we learn, Wisse asks, about Judaism and Jewish civilization by studying the Holocaust? It was "not of the Jews' making … yet, with demonic irony, it was the topic through which Jews were becoming best known." Wisse has strong reservations about the founding of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum: "I worried that exhibiting what had happened to Jews under Hitler could reinforce existing ideas of them as perpetual victims and suspects." Many Jews are less interested in Judaism than in the long dark history of anti-Semitism.

At a dinner party I attended a few years ago, I met a Jewish woman who was obsessed with anti-Semitism. When I began to talk about my recent visit to Hungary, she interrupted me. She wanted to tell her Hungarian story—a very compelling one, she thought, about Hungarian anti-Semitism. When she was in Budapest in 1977, she saw a ruined synagogue. She photographed it and tried to donate the snapshot to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. She could not understand why the museum rejected her photo, since it was obvious to her that the [End Page 265] same people who murdered Jews also left the synagogue in disrepair. The woman assumed that everyone would agree with her, but I pointed out that Budapest was bombed by the Americans as well as the Russians; it was not clear who destroyed the synagogue. "I don't care who destroyed it," she said impatiently. "It wasn't restored because of anti-Semitism." I pointed out that in 1977 many churches in Budapest were also in a state of ruin.

The city took a long time to recover from World War ii and the 1956 uprising: "One of the biggest synagogues in Europe is in Budapest, and it has been beautifully restored," I said. The woman looked at me scornfully. "So you don't think there's anti-Semitism in Hungary?" It was a tense moment—a dinner-party-ending moment—because I was about to say that she was insulting my non-Jewish Hungarian wife by her suggestion that most Hungarians were anti-Semitic. But it was probably the case that she did not know that my wife was Christian. The woman was so self-absorbed that she rattled on about many topics—never asking the other guests any questions. I thought that if I continued to talk about Hungary, I might lose my temper, so I changed the subject. I could have told her that my wife's family's exodus from Hungary in 1948 was sponsored by a Jewish agency. (What my father-in-law did during the war to help Jews, I do not know.) I could have said that she should read Paul Lendvai's The Hungarians, which is an excellent chronicle of Hungarian history.

Lendvai, who describes himself as a "Hungarian-born Austrian author with Jewish parents," offers a balanced view of Jews in Hungarian history. He doesn't downplay anti-Semitism, but he also talks about the major role Jews have played in Hungarian culture, manufacturing, and finance. Hungarian Jews, unlike Jews elsewhere in Eastern Europe, were for the most part chauvinistic. I could have mentioned Georg Solti, the conductor, a Hungarian Jew who lost many relatives in the Holocaust (though not his immediate family), yet he says in his memoirs: "I am grateful for having been born and trained there." On the last page of his memoirs he describes his return to the Hungarian village where his father was born.

When he arrived, the town came out to celebrate [End Page 266] him: "As I got out of the car, a group of children started to play some Hungarian folk songs on recorders." After planting a tree to commemorate his visit and seeing a plaque in his honor, he walked to the old Jewish graveyard, where he saw for the first time the graves of his grandparents: "As I stood in the afternoon sunshine surrounded by the graves of my ancestors, and later, as I stood on a hill overlooking Lake Balaton, I felt for the first time in sixty years a sense of belonging." Solti, who was in Hungary to record music by three Hungarian composers with whom he studied—Béla Bartók, Zoltán Kodály, and Leó Weiner—felt himself both Jewish and Hungarian. At the dinner party I mentioned that Hungary has the largest Jewish community in Eastern Europe—roughly 100,000 Jews, though most are not observant Jews. (Solti was not an observant Jew, though his parents were.) But I imagine that this fact meant nothing to my antagonist. She went to Hungary, it seemed to me, looking for proof that Hungary was strongly anti-Semitic.

Nothing would dislodge this view from her mind. To be sure there is anti-Semitism in Hungary, but it is not a major strain in the culture. Ultranationalist parties, which usually are anti-Semitic, get roughly 5 percent of the vote. Yet, if the woman was wrong about Hungary, she is right to worry about anti-Semitism, which is flourishing in the Middle East, where radical Islamists prescribe the murder of Jews, as one observer has put it, "as a kind of chemotherapy." Since there is so much anti-Semitic literature circulating in books and on the Internet, anti-Semitism is likely to remain strong for a long time. Even in the U.S. some people have idiotic ideas about Jewish power and Jewish conspiracies. When the attacks on the Twin Towers occurred, my younger daughter was working as a waitress in a midtown Manhattan restaurant. A waiter, who undoubtedly didn't think of himself as anti-Semitic, told her the Jews who worked in the two buildings were given advance notice about what would happen that day so that they would not show up for work. My daughter's sarcastic reply was, "Yeah. And they learned about it by logging onto Jew.com ." I too worry about anti-Semitism.

Though rabid anti-Semitism has had no effect on my life, it makes me realize how vulnerable Jews are in many parts of the world, and it occasionally makes me [End Page 267] think of my Jewish childhood—those Saturday mornings when I either dutifully praised God in the synagogue or laughed at Bugs Bunny's antics in the movie theater. A few weeks ago I decided to watch some Bugs Bunny cartoons again. Bugs often travels underground, and we see furrows of dirt that show his progress. Bugs usually surfaces in a dangerous place—in the middle of the woods, where Elmer Fudd is rabbit hunting, or in the middle of a bullring, where he must fight a bull. When he comes up, he is often chewing a carrot and muttering, "Eh, what's up, Doc?" Thinking about rabid anti-Semitism, God, and Bugs Bunny, I fall asleep and dream that Bugs comes up from his underground passage and finds himself in a crowd of ranting jihadists who are marching with their AK–47s held high and screaming anti-Semitic curses. Bugs is staring at these men and wondering what's going on. "Eh, what's up, Doc?" he says to no one in particular.

I wake up and the dream remains briefly in my consciousness, and I mutter to myself and maybe also to the God I am agnostic about: "What is up, Doc?" [End Page 268] Rabbit Language Feedback diet and health We are not veterinarians, we are just rabbit fanciers. If you have an emergency or medical need, the first thing is to call a good rabbit vet asap. See rabbit.org for a list of vets in your area. Rabbit medicine is now so advanced that your best option is always to see a good veterinarian and usually right away. Rabbit.org has lists of them or ask if any vet if they have a lot of experience in rabbits. We are providing this info in an effort to answer our many emailed questions. Here's a link to the Merck Veterinary manual for rabbits. emergencies Rabbits should not be off their feed or water more than 24 hours (and they must be eating the proper rabbit diet). Keep an eye on your pet every day to see if they are eating, drinking and eliminating. If not, call a vet right away. Our vet said that brown or reddish urine by itself isn't that bad, but definitely a symptom of diet being off.

So is loose stool. You could try another brand of pellets (though switching can itself cause problems). Cut out all vegetables, fruits, and treats for a while and see if that makes a difference. Watch for straining to eliminate in the kitty box. Make sure bunny is not eating something you don't know he or she is eating -- inspect their area for chew marks. important: Rabbits redigest some of their pellets, i.e., poo. Make sure they can get to their pellets and are not impacted around the anus. If so, set them in a few inches of room temperature water and gently massage to remove any old dirt. Dry them as much as you can with towels or a cool hair dryer. Careful trimming may help. not eating / force feeding You can force feed your animal but it's not a substitute for the vet. The vet can inject some water under the skin on his neck to give him valuable liquids if he hasn't been eating. The vet can sell you Critical Care which is a mix for force-feeding. In an emergency, mix up plain rabbit pellets and a lot of clean, fresh, room-temperature water in a blender until it's liquified. Put some in an eyedropper-shaped item or a turkey baster.

You can get large plastic hypos from the vets. Wrap bunny up like a burrito in a towel so he can't squirm. Gently but firmly turn him upside down so he is in your arms like a baby. Insert the eyedropper or hypo into his mouth slightly to the side of his two big front teeth. Squeeze gently. If he doesn't swallow, talk gently and maybe walk around a bit while you are holding him. I've found that a tiny bit of force feeding or even getting some liquid in his mouth can make a huge difference when he is not eating. My Rabbit Health in the 21st Century book advises having a can of pumpkin in the house (no additives, just plain pumpkin). My vet recommended baby foods such as squash. Really the only thing that seems to work for me when my rabbits are not eating, other than force-feeding a thin slurry, is to find some really good and fresh organic veggiessuch as cilantro, carrot tops, dandelions, parsley, basil, or watercress. The vet has gave me digestive enzymes to put on their food which also speed up the digestion.

good for the immune system I have had great luck recently feeding a capful of goat kefir to a sick animal. It seemed to really give a big boost to his immune system. It is probiotic. Goat kefir is easier to digest then cow kefir. Have some yourself while you are at it...it's good for critters. I have also given probiotic, raw saurcraut. Blot it as dry as you can, chop a tiny bit with something that the rabbit will eat such as a kernel of popcorn. for a sick rabbit At the first sign of illness, watch them carefully and take them to the vet. Offer water. Sometimes you can see them straining in the litter box, or spending a long time in there. Sometimes they may be lethargic. If they are weak, take them to the vet immediately. Check also to see that the anus area is not impacted with dirt. pain They say that very loud grinding of teeth indicates pain. Like what rabbits do when you are petting them but louder and without petting. more illness info at bottom of page diet Feed your bunnies lots of Timothy Hay. It can't be too fresh -- keep it wrapped up and give a handful daily.

They eat the best bits. Eating hay should help with hairballs. note: we just found a place that sells really good timothy hay that they are sure to love, direct from the farm. You order by email or 800 number: American Pet Diner . Often, those that won't eat regular timothy, will eat the Oxbow-Orchard Grass hay readily. Hay makes a huge difference to their digestive system and bunnies need a good digestive system. You will notice their pellets look bigger, rounder, and drier. I feed my buns their entire pellet ration over 3 meals in the day. This is so I can immediately tell which rabbit is not eating. Get the best pellets, I recommend Oxbow. You can buy them online from Small Pet Select . Rabbits should eat in percentages: 1/3 pellets or less, 1/3 timothy hay (alfalfa has too much calcium and too much protein), and 1/3 green and yellow vegetables. RabbitEars shelter in El Cerritto recommends a very few pellets once at bedtime sprinkled in the hay so they have to forage for them. They should be eating mostly hay.

Rabbits digest their food twice. They eat the gooey, smelly pellets right out of the anus. If you see them with their head stuck in their belly they are fishing around for a pellet. Then they straighten out and chew it up wth a strange look on their face and their ears back. Umm good. Those pellets must taste really good to a bunny. vegetables Check rabbit.org for the recommended list. They need the vegetables because they have fresh vitamins in them.Best vegetables are dandelion greens (pick and wash or get them from health food store) and plain old parsley. Common sense: in the wild, baby rabbits and hares drink mothers milk until a certain age and then eat a variety of greens including an occasional grain or fruit. treats and poisons Healthy vegetables can still be treats. Rabbits have 18,000 tastebuds on their tongue (we only have 9000) so variety and freshness is good, so are organics. Sweets including fruit to a minimum. For training, my vet said it's ok to give up to 6 raisins a day OR a small piece of banana OR a piece of apple OR a piece of carrot.

(Our bunnies love bananas but the House Rabbit Society says "no bananas". It may rot their teeth. Bananas are good to hide pills in though.) Vegetables in large quantities cause a certain amount of diarhea, i.e, wet loose stool. Bunnies like to eat flowers. Some flowers are bad for them so make sure you check the HRS list of poisonous plants . Rose hips are good for them (no thorns) and nothing is cuter than a bunny who runs up to you smelling like a gardenia. I feed my bunnies lavendar heads occasionally. Herbs are powerful, so be careful. Many houseplants are poisonous. Rabbits often will take a small bite of an unknown food and wait a few hours to see if it makes them sick. If not they will eat more. This still doesn't prove that it is safe. Human processed food is bad for bunnies. They will eat lots of things...hard bread, oats, peanut butter, but it's not actually rabbit food and it will mess up their delicate systems. Chocolate is poison. Also, don't take something out of your mouth to give to bunny. We have bacteria in our mouths that is not good for them.

age in rabbits You can tell a lot by how long their nails are, their general condition, their teeth, and for males: balls drop at about 6 months. You can tell if it is an adolescent if its ripping up everything in your house, and trying to mount stuffed animals. Females mature about 6 months too, so if theyre displaying sexual behavior... Have a veterinarian tell you. old age Rabbits can easily live til ten years or more if they are healthy and happy. I had one 12 years. Older rabbits can be a great pleasure as they stop ripping up everything and want a lot of petting. They still need regular exercise to stay in good condition. Don't let them overeat. And check their anus area to make sure they are impacted with dirt. If so, they may need the area trimmed or a sponge bath to remove the dirt (see 'bathing' below). Watch out for changes in diet, and heavy breathing. Go the vet if you see any of these signs. snuffles / pasturella One of our bunnies had Pasturella. Check this info with rabbit.org . This disease has to be caught early. You can keep the disease under control with life-long antibiotics.

antibiotics The vet can put them in a 'nebulizer' which is like an aquarium filled with airborne antibiotics instead of air and they breathe them in for 30 minutes daily for a week. They can get a lot heavier dose through their lungs than through their stomach. Ingesting antibiotics makes them sick and kills that good bacteria. Bunnies on antibiotics also need to have live yogurt or acidofolus or probiotics or kefir. My vet says the bunnies like yogurt but I have never had one who would eat it voluntarily. Soak a bit of granola in it and let it dry or wipe some on their paw. Once I mixed it with the pellets slurry and forcefed it. I have had good luck with goat kefir. They can also be given a pellet from a healthy bunny. It has to be the eating pellet rather than the spent pellet...so you may have to interrupt a bunny in the litter box to get it. medicine Liquid Wrap him up like a burrito in a towel, and tip him upside down twice a day, and inject the heart medicine into the side of his mouth. The worst part can be just catching your rabbit twice a day at medicine time!

It's a good reason to get your rabbit used to being handled. Sometimes the vet will give an injection of fluid in bunnies shoulder to stop dehydration (or have you do it). Pills Hide them inside a banana, a raisin, grind them up and put them in something they like. Sometimes rabbits will voluntarily eat their pill but make sure they don't spit it out. Don't give sweets regularly as they can rot rabbits' teeth. lop ear Check the ears regularly for mites and scaliness you should be able to see in the ears. You will see them shaking their head or stratching their ears. The vet can give you a cleaner and medicine. My vet said many lop ears have fungus infections in their ears. It will cause major problems with balance and hopping if left untreated. Having to treat ears regularly may cause your bunny to hide from you. matted fur I got a dog clipper. The worst mats were on his stomach where it's real sensitive and around his balls. You need to groom your rabbits regularly. You will have mats on the feet if you don't trim the nails. fleas They come in the house on our clothes. One vet gave us Advantage which was rubbed on the back of the neck.

We got the kitten formula and the 4 pound bunny only got a half dose, the larger bunny got a full dose. It worked after 1 or 2 applications. mites Bunnies have mites always on their skin. They shouldn't cause you any problem, but it probably wouldn't hurt to wash your hands after petting. When bunnies become ill or stressed, the mites will rise up. Mites will annoy humans too. bed bugs Unfortunately bed bugs will be happy to thrive on your pet even after you have isolated your own bed. Therefore, isolate a cage for your pets at nightime. Check rabbit's ears daily to look for transparent eggs and remove them with castor oil and/or rubbing alcohol. Inspect their feet for live bugs. Inspect the undersides and proximity of litterbox, hay bales and other areas daily. Use only natural bedbug sprays or methods such as the C02 traps. Peppermint oil will attract bed bugs into traps. Clove oil can be rubbed on ears and feet to deter bugs. eye infection Rabbits can get thick white mucous on their eyes. Eye infections are serious. Take them to the vet! cutting nails Someone has to cut the nails.

Take him to the vet and have her show you how to do it. Some vets sell nail clippers which look more like scissors and are sharper than the kind the pet stores sell. I used to use the burrito method but now put the bunny on the counter where there is good light and let him sit on a towel. Let him express his anger by ripping at the towel. Wear gloves and sleeves if necessary. If you clip the nails frequently, bunny will get used to it. Give him a treat after. tooth absess My bunny had an hour of dental surgery with anesthesia for an absess. His face was swollen on one side and I think he was in a lot of pain. He had stitches, on the inside only, but face was shaved. The bacteria was tested and turned out to be pasturella. The vet ran a culture to see which antibiotic killed the Pasturella bacteria. He barely ate for 5 days. teeth growing too long A healthy bunny grinds their teeth down by chewing hay and such. One Vet said every bun is different—sometimes tiny points on the teeth will bother one bun enough to make them stop eating all together or certain things. Others it won't.

Others can have significant points and still eat, others not. Some bunnies need to have their teeth ground down every 6 months. lumps Could be cancer or could be something else. Benign cysts are common too. Take to the vet. Female rabbits unspayed have a tendency to get cancer. Female rabbits have a natural lump, the dewlap, under their chin. Check your female bunny's belly every now and then to screen for lumps. Cancer can come on really fast. bathing Bathing your bunny is problematic. It dries out their skin. The hair dryer dries out the skin also. If you must wash your bunny, give a sponge bath and towel dry real well. Stand them in just a little water. I think bunnies should be able to swim, but don't give them a bath. Bathing rabbits is dangerous as it's hard to get the temperature right, and whatever temperature you choose, they can faint. Yet for a rabbit who is not cleaning himself, it is important to keep him clean and remove any impacted pellets from around the anus. Again, it's a good reason for getting your buns used to being handled.

a word about dying I noticed one rabbit seemed to revert to a more wild behavior toward the end. He wanted to spend all his time outdoors on the deck. He also liked to lie in dirt. It is advised that you should let the bunny see and sniff the dead body of a companion rabbit. So that they can understand "death". If it's not possible to do let your bunny see the deceased, spend a lot of time with him. In my town it is illegal to bury a pet outdoors, but the local 'pound' will dispose of your loved one for a small donation. Putting to sleep It's better to be alive and not feeling well than dead. Many people put pets to sleep way too early in my opinion but I did take one very sick animal in to have it done—he was having trouble breathing and seemed to be in pain. If the rabbit doesn't seem to be in pain (see grinding teeth) and just can't walk, it is not such a bad thing to help the animal get around. Email questions (put 'rabbits' in subject line please)......... Back to rabbit language ......... Back to Rabbit Central .........

Back to rabbit home page All text and graphics copyright �1995-2016 by Carolyn 'r' Crampton. All rights reserved. Lettuce is dangerous for rabbits: bunny foods to feed and avoid - West Sussex County Times Lettuce is dangerous for rabbits: bunny foods to feed and avoid Rabbit Awareness Week 11:53 Wednesday 22 June 2016 As various veterinary clinics across Sussex offer free health checks and discounted offers in support of Rabbit Awareness Week, here are some of the bunny foods to steer clear of. Rabbits should not be fed carrots and lettuce, according to leporine experts. Despite the traditional image of our floppy-eared friends nibbling on rocket and iceberg, or the iconic Bugs Bunny pose with carrot in paw, root vegetables should not be at the top of the shopping list when it comes to your bunny’s diet – and lettuce, which is actually dangerous to rabbits, should not even feature. As part of Rabbit Awareness Week – an annual campaign to raise the profile of rabbit welfare – Lucy Ross, Head of Training at Pets Corner, outlined what constitutes a safe and healthy diet for rabbits so you can keep your pet in tip top condition.

“We are all familiar with Bugs Bunny, who would regularly whip out a carrot to munch on,” Lucy said, “but carrots are not the best thing to be feeding rabbits on a day-to-day basis. “The bulk of a rabbit’s diet should be made up of hay with 10% of what they eat comprising of vegetables. For example, curly kale is among some of the veggies rabbits can enjoy on a daily basis. “But iceberg lettuce – a popular staple among humans that can often make it into the pet food pile is dangerous and should never be fed to rabbits.” A healthy diet for a pet rabbit should mimic what his cousins in the wild forage for – grass, plants and vegetables. Good quality hay is an excellent alternative to grass and the foundation of a healthy diet for pet rabbits. As well as strengthening teeth and jaws, it provides fibre to maintain a healthy gut and nibbling on hay keeps bunnies busy, reducing boredom and helping prevent behavioural problems.

Lucy continued: “Alongside hay, which should make up 80% of your pet’s diet, we recommend adding one and a half mugs of fresh, raw fruit and veg per rabbit every day with complete nuggets and mix making up the remaining 10%.” Here’s five tips for keeping your rabbit healthy: Feed often – most days: bell peppers (remove seeds), raspberry leaves, watercress, coriander, courgette, curly kale Feed frequently – two to four times a week: parsley, blueberries, cabbage, cauliflower leaves, broccoli, tomato (not stems or leaves), mangetout, Brussels sprouts Feed occasionally – once a week: apple (remove seeds), mint, carrots, pak choi, blackberries, cucumber peelings, dandelion leaves, celery Never feed: avocado, coconut, garlic, iceberg lettuce, hot peppers, chillies, potatoes, tomato leaves and stems, onions Fresh water – always ensure your rabbit has plenty of fresh, clean water The Rabbit Welfare Association and Fund – a national charity supported by Pets Corner – advocates the hay and veggie diet.

However, it advises commercial foods should not be cut out as they contain important nutrients that can be deficient in a totally hay/veggie diet. Lucy added: “Take care to introduce any new foods gradually. An abrupt change to a rabbit’s diet can trigger digestive upsets, which could prove fatal to some.” Rabbit Awareness Week runs until Sunday 26th June - more at Don’t miss out on all the latest breaking news where you live. Here are four ways you can be sure you’ll be amongst the first to know what’s going on. 1) Make our website your homepage 2) Like our Facebook page 3) Follow us on Twitter 4) Register with us by clicking on ‘sign in’ (top right corner). You can then receive our daily newsletter AND add your point of view to stories that you read here. And do share with your family and friends - so they don’t miss out! Always the first with your local news. Be part of it.

Question: What food can Bugs Bunny often be seen eating?
Answer: Carrots