(Something-or-other non-warning: the following 2 video vlogs and blogpost from The-Labyrinth discuss rabbits as pets and rabbit fur used as angora ‘wool’. There is NO graphic or saddening footage. Just fluffy stuff, I promise.)
After writing and publishing the book, Netherland Dwarf Rabbits: taking care of them in Australia—now published at Amazon and Smashwords—I developed an even closer relationship with Tirian and Minxy. You try following two young dwarfs around with a camera for a few days, experiencing the intimacy of their everyday lives, while also getting them to sit in giant coffee cups and wheelbarrows for free food. Chickens and rabbits, never work with them!
However, I do have a house to build! Photographing rabbits artistically takes time. And Patience. And it brings in little cash, you can buy my book here. Rabbits want to eat, sleep, play and run a muck up over social order and food. Politics: Minxy gets fed first otherwise he scratches whoever is in the vicinity of his wild, double-paw-claws-sticking-right-out spin. He (the tan Agouti) looks cute but he’s a nasty piece of work.
His dwarf rabbit brother, also from the Netherlands but bred in Australia, Tirian (the Chocolate Otter), is one mild-mannered, cuddly, placid totally chilled out bunny. He’s always up for a pet or a cuddle with fur so soft…
Still, no need to make a jumper out of him! Lucky our boys, Minxy and Tirian, live in Australia and not China! Besides, Netherland Dwarfs are bred for there cuteness, not their fur.
Did you know rabbits are vegan, like, mine are anyway? Like even if they were starving to death I don’t think they would start gnawing on each others raw flesh like ‘human carnivores’ would given that situation… Well, not all men carnivores, only the human ones who are adamant that we mere humans are meant to slaughter animals and eat meat. You know, the ones that say, “Look! at my canines.”, while pointing furiously at their teeth, created perfectly pointy for breaking into nuts.
I’d like to show you a video I made in spring of 2015. It’s kind of embarrassing but I’m getting over that; after all, my world is online and this was my first or second video published online.
Meet Mixie and Tirian (forever immortalised Anne Geddies style on my book cover):
I had the most fun ever, all huddled up in my bubble of clean air, the fragrance-free study supplied to students with fragrance Allergy (and other conditions impacted on by chemical sensitivity) by Victoria University, St Albans, Australia. Terrifically good people over there.
I poured my heart and soul into this book; I hid from trauma and heartache in this book. I also got to work with my Established Author and Friend, Kim Cook, who taught me the finer details of the Adobe program, inDesign; while also smashing it with me with a different self-published Author platform, Smashwords. While working on my cookbook, ‘Vegan Indulgences ~ for those transferring to a HCLF lifestyle’, Cook is my role model (for writing not cooking!). Like, especially when I get stuck. It’s like: [I hear Kim’s voice in my head, talking to themselves (meaning ‘self’ in the pronoun of ‘they’)] “Mmm… Google this, do that. Oh, yeah. Ah uh.”, and, vamoose! We have cutest damn rabbit bullet. A. Rabbit. Bullet! (For listing text into a short list so that it’s easy to read in bullet form, in case you don’t use computers much, which I know that is exactly how it is for many of my readers. You can always post me a letter, I do write back on well aired out paper written on in pencil.)
Now, juxtaposed against the cuteness of my adorable, cheeky balls of fluff is the following video, where, just the other night actually, I found out that the jumper, one of my absolute favourites that I just happened to be wearing had fur, in the form of ‘Angora’, sewn, gruesomely embedded in amongst its nylon and acrylic fibres. I took it off to read the tag: Angora, Nylon, Acrylic ‘fibres’. Then I put back on my soft batwing cape and made the following video:
Here is the YouTube link to ‘My Favourite Jumper is made from Angora‘. I’ve not decided on what, if anything, to do with this jumper. Keep wearing it? (Use it to wrap my bunnies in? Sounds good to me.) Or:
Like the scarlet letter painted on the town wench, the jezebel of Melbourne flaunting sin in capes of purple velvet, I’m surrounded by animals skins, their furs. It’s weird waking up to the truth of what goes on with the animals in our world. The specism, I’ve got a collection of ugg boots that I don’t believe could ever keep me warm again. Not without that cold, disconnected sense of being taking over my perception, clouding reality once again. (What am I going to do? I can’t buy new boots. I do own a lot of socks, I could just put on 9 pairs of socks, especially if I am still in this draughty Beach-house this winter. Come on house, just get built will you? No solvents in plaster to outgass. Pray the epoxy grout is going to be okay. Or just kill me now. There are animals dying every minute.
Are you vegan? How have you handled your guilt over past atrocities committed against the animals in the name of luxury brands? If you’re not vegan, how do you feel about fur used in clothing. Leather?
(If you feel misaligned, maladjusted and marginalised to the point of invisibility; if you feel subjected, effected and rejected my society because of 3 letters, MCS (or EHS (Electrohypersensitivity)), then imagine how animals right now right this very minute are feeling. Is that okay with you?)
Yes, I’m using oxygen in this video, which I might make another video (vlog) about later. It’s helping me by giving me relief from painful upper airway inflammation. It’s nearly as good as going to the beach!
The Guardian: Can Angora fur ever be ethical? (Warning: Graphic Footage that needs to be shown in schools)
(This post has been updated)
When humans started wearing clothing animal skins were their first choice. Without animal skin clothing aou ancestors would have never made it out of the tropics. From what I know about Australian history cute little bunny rabbits almost destroyed the Australian outback. To be eaten and a chance to become part of a fair maidens attire is a small price to pay to maintains a stable environment that will keep the rest of them surviving.
Lol
Yes, I get your point. I don’t doubt our ancestors were kept warm with animal fur but in our day and age there is no need to treat animals in any harmful way just to exploit them. They are not ours to do with as we please seeing we have wonderful modern technology and the knowledge that eating plants is healthier and can cure common diseases such as heart disease. Yes, wild rabbits are a huge problem in Australia. Not sure if you know, but they are not native to our land like the wallaby or kangaroo. Rich white settlers bought rabbits in along with their foxes for hunting, therefore the rabbits and the foxes run rampant, destroying farm land today. I am not sure if that is Karma or, more than likely, the viruses that were released to destroy their colonies. The Calicivirus Disease (RCD) as a biological control agent, they infected the rabbits with to wipe them out is still running through their veins today: they’re immune to it. Pity that didn’t happen to us with moulds and chemicals. We humans think we are so smart. From a reputable source: “…in some areas the wild rabbits are dying and in some areas they are not. It has just been found that some wild European rabbits in Australia have antibodies to a benign relative of RHD that existed in Australia prior to the escape of RHD. A vaccinated pet rabbit died in Victoria and it is thought that the vaccine against this disease may not always protect peoples pet rabbits.”
Have a decent day
Also, there’s a whole group of tech heads in Silicone Valley who live on a product developed and named Soylent. i think the plan is if the world has no food we can all live on that stuff. True story. It would make a great blogpost. I tolerate soy. How about you?
http://ixchelbunny.blogspot.com.au/
Thanks for sharing your videos, your rabbits and Bella are beautiful. I just needed to sya that there are responsible angora rabbit owners. like yourself. One is the lovely lady who owns and runs her fibre/art business in the Yarra Valley…beautiful natural dyes she uses also, after gently clipping her special angora rabbits, from top breeding lines.
I have wool and mixed fibres from her, and they are so beautiful. Have been knitting shawls for years, and socks too. ((hugs)) and take care ..Lindy
Thanks. I’m thinking of getting an Angora rabbit. I’d like to grab a gun and go rescue those ones I saw in the video getting plucked in China–Nah, just kidding. I’m in bed, lol. I’d like to know of this woman in Yarra Valley. The worst thing about going vegan, Dan, my partner has gone full ethical vegan, is that I sleep on a wool mattress; most of my clothing is of natural fibre, some nylon and acrylics though. Rarely pollster. I do love my clothes but I do love the animals, thankfully, too.
I’d love to see your socks and shawls sometimes. 🙂 ((hugs)) to you too… Miche
PS: my shawl/cape/airy jumper with sleeve cuffs says: made in China. So gross. Did you see the article in the Guardian?