📅 Sunday, 9 August 2026 · No. 133

Accidentally Won a Rabbit (Learning Fast)

🌿 Daily Logs · ✎ 6 min · by Azmi in Meknes

Azmi's note My personal log from Meknes, not vet advice. Just what I did and saw tonight.

I am Azmi from Meknes, and I need to confess something at the top of this page: a year ago I was not a rabbit person. I am now writing an orientation brochure for one rabbit, which tells you everything about how the year went. The plot twist is that I never chose him. I put a few coins down at a pet convention event, mostly for fun, and walked out holding a carrier with a small bewildered passenger inside. Live animals as prizes are a terrible idea, and I will say that plainly before the story gets cute. But here we were, he and I, and the only honorable response was to become the kind of person who learns fast. This page is the welcome packet I wish someone had handed me that night.

Office One: The Housing Department

Welcome, new resident. Your campus is a corner of my living room, and the housing department (me, sleep-deprived, reading care guides at midnight) prepared it in a hurry. The pen went up first: solid flooring, soft bedding, a hideout box with two doors so you never feel cornered, and a hay rack mounted where you can reach it without acrobatics. I learned that first night that a prize animal does not need prize handling, meaning display and applause, but real care, meaning space, quiet, and the right to ignore me. He spent the first evening pressed into the hideout, and I spent it sitting on the floor nearby, reading aloud so he could get used to my voice. Enrollment: one rabbit. Orientation attendance: one human, trying hard.

The housing office issued exactly one rule that first week: this is your room and I am the guest. I stopped reaching into the pen to grab him, stopped rearranging his furniture for photographs, and let him come out on his own schedule. It took days, and those days taught me more than any guide. He mapped every corner with his nose, tested the rug with his teeth, and chose a favorite sitting spot by the wall where he could watch the whole room. I put a second mat there and called it the student lounge. When I later read notes from other first weeks together, I recognized every stage: the hiding, the first brave steps, the first time he took food while I was still holding it. My campus was on schedule.

Office Two: The Dining Hall

Every orientation needs a tour of the dining hall, and ours centered on a single lesson: hay first, everything else after. I bought proper hay the morning after he arrived, filled the rack high, and watched him ignore the fancy pellets I had also bought in favor of pulling strand after strand from the rack. That was my first lecture and I took notes. Fresh water in a heavy bowl, a small measured portion of pellets, and leafy greens introduced slowly became our routine. I want to be careful here, because food advice is exactly where a new owner can go wrong: I am just a human in Meknes, not a vet, so I checked everything about hay types and portions with my vet instead of trusting convention gossip or internet threads. New students with questions about diet should do the same and ask their clinic early.

The dining hall also taught me budgeting, because this small student eats like a scholar with a scholarship. The first bag of hay I bought looked enormous and lasted a shockingly short time. I upgraded to bigger bags, found a reliable shop, and set up a corner station that stays clean and dry. Watching him eat became my favorite evening class. He sorts through the rack with real opinions, and the crunching sound while I drink my tea is the sound of tuition well spent. Plush toys would have been easier and cheaper, I joked to my sister that week. She asked whether I regretted the accident. I looked at the small creature asleep on my rug and told her the accident was the best administrative error of my life.

Office Three: Campus Safety and Field Trips

The safety office has the strictest policies on campus. Outside roaming happens only under supervision, because the real world contains dogs, traffic, gaps in fences, and plants I cannot identify. Our field trips are the balcony and one rabbit-proofed room, both checked before every visit: cords lifted, small gaps blocked, fragile things moved. I keep a little log of dangers spotted and fixed, which sounds obsessive until you watch a rabbit find the single exposed wire in a tidy room within ninety seconds. He has an inspector’s eye. I have the repair kit. Together we maintain a campus with zero incidents so far, and I intend to keep that record.

The most joyful page of the orientation file came a few weeks in, when the cautious newcomer started showing the classic signs of settling: sprinting, twisting mid-air, flopping hard onto his side. I had read about these happy sprints and finally saw one in my own hallway, and I understood why stories of early binkies at home make every rabbit owner grin. My student was not just surviving the transfer; he was celebrating it. I sat in the hallway and laughed out loud, and he did another lap as if encore requests were part of the curriculum. Week one graduate, still studying: that was my diary line that night, and it still holds.

Dean’s Message to the Class of One

If I could add one page to every convention program, it would be this brochure with a firm cover letter: please do not offer live animals as prizes. A rabbit is not a souvenir; he is a decade-long commitment with opinions about hay and a heart that needs earning. I got lucky, and I worked hard to deserve the luck, but many such stories end badly and quietly. Since the accident, I tell everyone who will listen to adopt deliberately, prepare the home first, and read one care guide before falling in love. Then fall in love completely, because that part is unavoidable once a small nose touches your hand for the first time.

Graduation from orientation never really arrives; the learning just gets more joyful. I still message my vet with questions, still rearrange the pen when he looks bored, still sit on the floor to be at his level. He is no longer the bewildered passenger from the convention hall. He is the resident, the dean of the rug, the reason my apartment has hay in places hay should never be. Pocket change brought him home. Patience is keeping him happy. Good luck was requested gratefully in the first diary entry, and tonight I can report that it arrived, long-eared and hungry, and stayed for dinner. Welcome week is over. The real semester, the good one, has begun.

🐰

Written by Azmi

I track my rabbits' diet, weight and naps to see what works. Photos are mine, mess included. Say hi on the contact page.

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