The Bunny and the Bathroom

There are two rooms that are typically off-limits to Walter: the bedroom and the bathroom. We keep the bedroom door closed, since our bedroom also serves as our home office and there are just too many wires to keep out of Walter’s mouth. We keep Walter out of the bathroom for more entertaining reasons.

For a few weeks, we decided to expand Walter’s bunny-approved play area to include the bathroom. He loved the cool temperature of the floor tile, and it was another new space for him to run laps. (Aside from our living room rug, the whole apartment has hardwood flooring, which doesn’t give Walter a whole lot of traction while he runs: hilarious for us, annoying for him.)

For the most part, Walter’s experience in our bathroom was uneventful. He would spend the entire day there, simply lying behind the toilet. Every now and then, he’d get up to clean himself or venture out to use the litter box, but he was mostly content with having found a cool place to take a nap. So far, allowing our rabbit to hang out in the bathroom was going well, until one day when Walter was in a particularly adventurous mood.

Walter, napping next to the toilet.

Ever fearful that the rabbit would try to hop onto the toilet seat, but instead fall into the toilet, I was sure to keep the toilet lid closed. As I walked by the bathroom on this particular day, I noticed that Walter had hopped up onto the seat. Grateful that I remembered to close the lid, I didn’t notice Walter’s curious gaze at the bathroom counter.

Twenty minutes later, Paul and I heard a loud crash coming from the bathroom. We ran over to see what had happened and found all our countertop accessories now on the bathroom floor, alongside a broken ceramic toilet brush canister and a bunny giving us his best “I didn’t do it!” face.

I sat with Walter for the next half hour, trying to deter him from attempting his jump from the floor onto the counter again.

Later that afternoon, we found Walter sitting on the floor, surrounded by toilet paper. He had managed to start pulling the TP from the roll, and instead of breaking off from the roll, the never-ending ribbon of bathroom tissue formed a little fort around the rabbit. He couldn’t have been more pleased with himself.

These events weren’t enough to ban the bunny from the bathroom entirely. It wasn’t until Walter chewed off six inches of the doorway’s molding that we realized the extent of his bathroom mischief and had to kick him out of his favorite room completely.