📅 Tuesday, 11 August 2026 · No. 135

Wicker Toys Are Treats, Not Toys

🏠 Home Setup · ✎ 5 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 am calling to order an emergency session of the household parliament. On one side of the table sits my Wallet, thin, tired, and smelling faintly of hay dust. On the other side sits the Bunny: big ears, pear-shaped head, innocent face, criminal record. The matter before the house: the wicker tunnel, purchased as furniture, eaten as dinner, eighty percent gone by morning. I will serve as moderator, since I am the only party who both pays and cleans. Opening statements will be heard. Interruptions will be frequent. Let the record show that the defendant is already chewing the table leg.

Opening Statement: The Wallet

The Wallet speaks first, and it does not hide its pain. Members of the household, it begins, I was full once. I held plans: a new lamp, a weekend trip, savings with actual digits. Then came the Christmas tunnel, a handsome woven structure bought to beautify the living room corner. By morning it was a crime scene. Shredded strands across the rug. A tunnel with skylights where no skylights were designed. The defendant consumed the furniture, and the prosecution rests its case on the receipt. Replacement budget, the Wallet continues, warming up: monthly, non-negotiable, forever? This is not a purchase; it is a subscription I never signed. I demand recognition that wicker is decor, that decor should survive the night, and that eighty percent losses by dawn constitute a financial emergency.

The Wallet produces exhibits: photographs of the tunnel at purchase, plump and whole, and at dawn, lace-like and listing sideways. It cites the chew marks on the second tunnel, the nibbled bridge, the basket that lasted a week. It asks, voice trembling, whether any object in this house is safe, whether the chairs are next, whether we are furnishing a living room or stocking a pantry. It concludes with a plea: one tunnel per season, supervised chewing only, and a firm line between toys and treats. The Wallet sits down to scattered silence. The Bunny, unbothered, begins grooming his face with both paws, which the record will note looked extremely cute and therefore prejudicial.

Opening Statement: The Bunny

The Bunny rises, or rather stays seated, because standing is for humans, and delivers the following through an interpreter (me, biased, well aware). Honorable moderator, beloved human, empty Wallet. I am small. I am growing. My teeth never stop growing either, and chewing is not a hobby but a duty I perform for the good of my own mouth. You placed before me a tunnel woven of delicious-smelling strands, positioned it in my territory, and left the room. What did you expect, a museum exhibit? I tasted it out of duty. It was excellent. I continued out of professionalism. By morning I had improved the tunnel by adding ventilation and demonstrating its true purpose. You call it destruction. I call it a review: five stars, would eat again.

The Bunny continues, ears high. Regarding the pear-shaped head and big ears mentioned in the charges: these are not fashion but engineering, built for listening and munching at scale. Regarding the allegation that wicker is furniture: everything at my height is either food, a toy, or a toilet, and your tunnel was clearly the first two. Regarding the budget: I accept payment in hay, attention, and head rubs, and I consider the tunnel its own reward. The defense rests, and requests a recess for a snack, which is granted, because the moderator has a soft heart and the defendant knows exactly where the treat jar lives.

Rebuttals and Cross-Examination

Cross-examination grows heated. The Wallet asks the Bunny whether he understands money. The Bunny answers by knocking a coin off the table and watching it roll under the couch, which the moderator rules as a response. The Bunny asks the Wallet whether it understands joy, and calls as witness the photograph of himself asleep inside the half-eaten tunnel, chin resting on wicker, eyes closed, utterly content. The chamber falls quiet. Even the Wallet admits, grudgingly, that the image has merit. I intervene with a point of order and a serious sentence that this debate format cannot provide: I am only the human here, not a vet, so questions about which chew materials suit a rabbit’s teeth and digestion go to my vet, not to this parliament. Our rulings cover budgets and furniture. Health guidance comes from the clinic.

Evidence is entered that complicates both cases. I describe how I decorated the last tunnel with extra hay and willow chewables to slow the demolition, a project recorded in my notes on decorating the tunnel toy, and how the enrichment worked for exactly two evenings before the Bunny solved it like a puzzle box. I also submit my log from the picky hay station, showing that a well-stocked hay rack reduces but never eliminates furniture tasting. The Wallet nods at the data. The Bunny attempts to eat the data. The moderator adjourns for tea and returns with a compromise drafted on the back of the receipt.

The Verdict: Treats That Look Like Toys

The ruling of the house is as follows. First, the wicker tunnel is hereby reclassified: not furniture, not a toy, but a treat that looks like a toy, budgeted monthly and purchased without grief. Second, the Bunny’s chewing is recognized as natural behavior to be directed, not punished: abundant hay, rotating chewables, and one glorious edible tunnel at a time. Third, the Wallet’s pain is acknowledged with a spending cap and a repair fund, plus the right to complain loudly on delivery day. The next tunnel arrives Friday. Survival estimate: two nights. Joy estimate: maximum. These figures are entered into the record without shame.

Parliament is adjourned, but the household continues, and that is the part I want to keep. Some homes would never allow a tunnel to be eaten; in mine, the crunching from the living room corner has become the sound of an animal fully at ease, redecorating to his taste. He is adorable with those big ears and expensive with that big appetite, and both facts can be true at once. The Wallet will recover. The Bunny will not reform, nor should he. And I will keep sweeping wicker crumbs with the devotion of a janitor in a palace built of snacks, grateful that my fiercest household dispute ends, every time, with a flop and a cuddle.

🐰

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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