Remember being a kid? There was no need to pay bills, no need to work. Your biggest worries were how to hide the play dough that fell into the carpet and what ingenious way you could come up with to avoid cleaning out the animal cages. (At least, in my case, this was something that concerned me, because we had several pet rabbits.)
Cleaning the rabbit cages was a daunting, three-hour long task. (As an adult, they would have been a ten minute task, but as a child, you know how we liked to stretch those things out, because THEY ARE THE WORST THINGS IN THE WORLD AND THEY WERE RUINING OUR LIVES IN THAT ONE MOMENT.)
Maybe that’s just me, but I’d like to think I was perhaps a somewhat normal kid.
During the process of cleaning out a bunny litter box, I apparently thought that swinging was involved. I’d go to the back yard with the offending box, along with a trash bag, and I’d begin to dump it. Halfway through the stinky chore (about 20 seconds into it, to be exact), I would decide to take a break and go swinging. I only swung back and forth on the swing-set a few times. (In other words, I spent about 20 minutes on it.) Then, I would return to my task. The litter would be dumped, and the next step involved soap and a hose. These were the days where clumping litter either didn’t exist or we just weren’t going to spend money on the expensive litter for a few little rabbits.
Did you know that rabbits can pee and poop the equivalent of twenty cats in ONE DAY??? I don’t have the actual back-up for this, but I’d say it’s fairly accurate, based on my “research” and experience.
Obviously, that much crap is HEAVY for an 8-year-old, and generally speaking, it called for another break (aka more swinging). Then, while swinging, it was a requirement in my mind to sing EVERY DISNEY SONG I HAD EVER HEARD at the same time. This really didn’t take too long. (Fine…it actually took another hour….but it was nice weather outside, and bunny boxes were….”Wait…what are bunny boxes? Was I supposed to be doing something else?…..I just remembered another song!”)
Eventually, I returned to my chore and finished it….see how this awful task takes three hours???
I’ll never own rabbits in my adult life. They’re soft and cuddly, and sometimes they play fetch (seriously, one of our bunnies played fetch with one of my stuffed animals), but until they can clean up after themselves, forget it!
Now I have to go…because the kitchen needs cleaned….
I think we should purchase a swing-set.