📅 Friday, 10 July 2026 · No. 107

Bunny-Proofing Failed: The Curtain Trap Incident

🏠 Home Setup · ✎ 6 min · by Azmi in Meknes

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

My name is Azmi, I live in Meknes with rabbits, and I need to confess something at the top of this entry: my living room was rabbit-proofed for years, or so I told every guest who admired the tidy cables and the blocked corners. Then one ordinary evening, my boy nibbled a neat hole in the curtain, poked his head straight through it, and got stuck. His own trap, built by his own teeth, and he fell for it completely. I found him wearing the curtain like a strange collar, blinking at me, waiting to be rescued from architecture of his own making.

He came out safely. I want that on the record before anything else, because a story like this should never keep anyone in suspense. No injury, no panic beyond mine, night disaster avoided by luck and by the habit of looking. I check on the rabbits before bed every single night, and that habit is the only reason this story is funny instead of frightening. But it forced a full review of everything I thought I knew about proofing, so I am writing this entry as an audit, the way an inspector would write it, except the inspector is me and the quality manager with the sharp teeth is him.

Audit scope: what I thought was safe

The scope of this audit is one living room, roughly five meters by four, home to one determined rabbit, one owner with too much confidence, one set of curtains, and a long history of small compromises. The cables were covered years ago. The low shelves were blocked. The bitter spray had been applied to the chair legs and reapplied after every wash. The balcony door had its guard. On paper, this room passed. In practice, the auditor had missed an entire category: soft furnishings at head height, reachable by standing on the arm of the couch.

Here is how the incident unfolded, reconstructed from the evidence and my own embarrassment. Sometime in the late afternoon, probably while I was making tea, he climbed onto the couch arm, which is his approved lookout post, and discovered that from that new height the curtain hem hung exactly at nibbling level. He tested it the way rabbits test everything, with one experimental bite. The fabric gave. Encouraged, he widened the hole with the careful attention of a tailor. Then, driven by the curiosity that runs every rabbit I have ever met, he pushed his head through to see the other side. The hole that admitted the head did not release it, because ears fold one way and not the other, and there he stayed until I walked in.

Finding one: anything head-sized is a trap

Finding one, and the most important of the three: anything head-sized is a trap until proven otherwise. I used to apply this rule to boxes, tunnels, and the gap behind the bookshelf. I never applied it to a hole in fabric, because I never imagined he would manufacture the hole himself. That was my failure as an auditor. Rabbits do not only find gaps, they create them, and every new gap must be treated as guilty until proven innocent. The curtain hole is now sewn, reinforced, and tied permanently out of reach, but the principle stays:

The corrective action was immediate. Curtains tied up high with proper tie-backs, the damaged panel sewn and then covered with a second layer at the bottom, edges blocked so no hem dangles within standing reach. I also moved the small footstool he was using as a step to the couch arm, breaking the staircase he had quietly built. Total cost of repairs: one evening, one needle, some thread, and a large piece of my pride. If he had shown any sign of hurt, a scratch, swelling, heavy breathing, I would have called the vet at once, because this diary logs and a vet judges, and no audit entry ever replaces professional care.

Finding two: the evening headcount is non-negotiable

Finding two concerns my own procedures. The evening headcount before bed, which I have mentioned in other entries, is now officially non-negotiable in this house, written into the routine like locking the door. Eyes on every rabbit, enclosure check, room scan, then sleep. On the night of the curtain incident, that single habit made all the difference. He had probably been stuck less than half an hour. Without the headcount, it could have been all night, and a stuck rabbit overnight can panic, twist, and turn a comedy into an emergency. Process saved us where proofing failed.

I have since extended the headcount into a short patrol. I walk the room the way he would walk it, at his height, looking for new chew marks, new gaps, new ambitions. It takes four minutes. It has already caught two future incidents: a loosening cable cover behind the television stand and a cushion zipper he had begun to worry open. Both fixed the same night. The lesson generalizes well beyond curtains, and it connects to how I arranged his safe corner, described in my room corner rabbit, where clear zones and daily checks keep one small territory genuinely safe.

Finding three: proofing is a process, not a project

Finding three is philosophical but it matters most. The only bunny-proofed house is a house with no bunny. I wrote that line in my notebook years ago as a joke, and this incident promoted it to policy. Proofing is not a project you finish on a Saturday with cable covers and congratulations. It is a process, an ongoing negotiation with a highly motivated engineer who works for treats and curiosity. He is the quality inspector, and he inspects continuously. My job is to keep pace with him, not to outsmart him once and retire.

That reframing changed how I spend my time. Instead of one big proofing weekend per year, I do ten minutes a week, one zone at a time, rotating through the room. Cables one week, fabrics the next, low shelves after that. It is less tiring and far more effective, because it matches the speed at which rabbit interests evolve. The rules I keep for shared furniture live alongside this routine, much like the boundaries I set out in couch time rules home, where the couch stays a shared seat only because its rules get reviewed as often as its cushions get sniffed.

Corrective log: what changed this week

Curtains tied up, holes sewn, lower edges blocked from standing reach
Footstool relocated to break the couch-arm staircase route
Evening headcount formalized into a four-minute low patrol before bed
Weekly ten-minute zone rotation started, fabrics first, cables second
Incident photo and notes filed so future me remembers the curtain trap

A week later, the room feels calmer, or perhaps I do. He still visits the curtain corner daily, sniffs the sewn patch, and moves on, the way an inspector revisits a corrected fault and nods. Yesterday he flopped against the couch leg right below the scene of the incident and fell asleep in the sun, completely unbothered, completely forgiven. I sat on the floor beside him and felt the particular relief that only rabbit owners know, the relief of a near miss that became a lesson instead of a loss.

So the audit closes with a verdict: room conditionally passed, owner retrained, inspector still employed and secretly pleased with himself. He bunny-proved me wrong within a week of my last boast about the living room, and honestly I respect the timing. The curtain is mended, the patrol continues, and the next trap he builds will teach me the next thing. That is the contract in this house. I provide the safe room, he tests it, and together we keep making it safer, one nibbled hole at a time.

🐰

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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