Earthquakes AND Lava!
It's been a crazy week. Starting around Wednesday, there were swarms of small earthquakes over the Puna area. We're forty two miles on the other side of Hilo from Puna and Puna is about another twenty miles the other side of Hilo. At sixty five miles away we didn't really feel the small earthquakes too much. On Thursday, the small earthquakes were still there, although there was one bigger one which was felt as far up the coast as we are. Then, Friday morning, there was a long shimmery earthquake followed by an even bigger and longer one an hour or so after the first one. Apparently, the second big one on Friday came in as a 6.9 magnitude earthquake. There was another one after that one, although it was smaller so it didn't shimmy quite as much.
In our area, the quake was felt as sort of a 'hula' earthquake, it swayed from side to side. It was a really long one, possibly around twenty seconds or so. The previous big earthquake we'd had in 2006 (6.7 magnitude) was much more of an up and down jumpy sort of earthquake. In our area, it wasn't too bad at all. I was working at "Treasures" in Honokaa, the little boutique shop where Hula Bunny yarn is sold - among many other 'treasures'. There's lots of glass and crystal items at the shop, none of them jumped to the floor, thankfully. We did find the extent of our damage when we got home.
Seems the earthquake wasn't exciting enough for baby Buddha, so he took a nap? We have a butsudan in the living room and this very festive non-traditional hot pink baby buddha statue sits on top of the much more traditional shrine. This butsudan is from the mid 1940's so it's wooden with lots of gold leaf on it. We decorate it with things Buddha would like, so there's little ceramic bunnies, incense, and other interesting small things. One of the marbles has a map of the world on it. Buddha would be interested in that, perhaps. Sometimes there's fruits such as an orange, but we don't generally put in rice and tea which is common with many butsudans, but we're afraid we'd forget and leave it there too long so we stick to ceramics and such.
We've woken up the baby Buddha and set him back upright. He seems much happier again. Which pretty much cleans up our earthquake 'damage', but we got off really lightly. Other parts of the island sustained much more significant earthquake damage.
Other than and worse than earthquake damage is the new lava flow in Leilani Estates. Leilani is a subdivision on the other side of Pahoa. It's one acre lots with nice houses on them, they have significant CCRs which require certain types of houses to be built, etc. So it's a nice subdivision, as far as Puna subdivisions go.
Thursday, following all the earthquakes and cracks in the road, fissures of lava erupted in Leilani Estates. This is now Sunday evening and there's already been about thirty houses eaten. It almost seems to be speeding up, rather than subsiding. When lava touches a house and burns it up, it's the house lost to lava. Which is not covered by any insurance. However, if fire gets to the house before the lava touches it, then it's a house fire and insurance does cover it. Providing the house was built with a permit and could be insured in the first place. At least in Leilani, they were pretty much permitted structures, unlike a lot of the general Puna area so hopefully most of the houses will be insured and catch on fire befoe the lava gets there. Our heart (and bunny hugs) go out to the folks in Puna, although they're gonna be needing a lot more than that in the next few days and months.
On to happier bunny news, this is the bunny's website, after all. The newest bunnies are getting older and fuzzier. (Soon they'll be big enough to give proper hugs.) These two are Ziggy Startdust and Sydney's two babies. They are a month old now and getting to the cute stage.
Baby Dot and Blondie aren't really their official names, that's just for now until we figure out what the name scheme will be for this year. Last year it was 'Zee Bunnies' and the year before that it was 'Atmospheric Conditions'. Dunno quite what we will do this year. Gods and goddesses? We'd not want to get Pele upset, though. Especially with the mood she's in now, what with flinging lava around in Leilani. Maybe name the bunnies after flowers or spices? Not sure yet, but some name theme will pop up soon, no doubt. The reason last year was Zee Bunnies was because Zookie Schwartz told me that was his name so every bunny else got a Zee name to go along with Zookie.
Ziggy needs a good grooming and her kits are about old enough now that she won't mind having a haircut. Right after they're born, generally the does don't get much grooming since they have enough stress in their life taking care of the new babies. Not sure if she will just get combed or get an entire haircut. Depends on what her coat looks like tomorrow when she gets groomed.
If you follow ARBA's rules about what a "proper" English angora should look like, you'll know that Baby Dot isn't it. Other than 'The Dot', which is enough to disqualify him from a bunny show right at the beginning, his ears are - as far as ARBA's standards go - deplorable. English angora bunny ears are supposed to be upright and in a fairly tight 'Vee'. Guess Baby Dot didn't get the memo about that. But, she/he's not destined to be a show bunny anyway. There also seems to be a white undercoat? Some bunnies seem to have white roots on a black bunny. I'm going to try to breed for more color on the coat down to the skin so the fiber will have more color to it for the yarn. Not sure what ARBA's opinion on that would be, though.
The 'he' in the previous sentence is just generic, at the moment, I'm pretty clueless about which gender each bunny may be. I think the younger lilac in Tootsie's litter may be male, but it's all a guess at this point since they're still so tiny.
I'm pretty sure this bunny is 'lilac' and not 'blue'. Lilac is a diluted Chocolate color while Blue is a diluted Black color. It's basically a warm gray color for the lilac and a cold gray color for the blues. For folks who sort grays by 'warm' and 'cold' colors. Genetically speaking, though, a lilac buck can sire chocolate and blue babies (which require a double set of recessive genes for them to show up so each parent must provide one recessive gene) while a blue buck can only sire blue babies (unless, of course, there's a recessive chocolate gene hiding behind the blue coat that you see).
This is the same gray bunny as in the previous picture, but this time the camera flash was used and the color of the bunny now looks much more chocolate colored than before. Wish there'd been a blue baby to go along with the lilac, it would have been interesting to compare the two. With the flash, it becomes obvious
Of the four current babies, at the moment I'd rank them with the lilac as the best, followed by the tortoiseshell (Blondie) and then it's kinda a toss up between Baby Dot and the little fawn. The little fawn is small and at the moment has a snotty nose. Not sure where that showed up from, but they were pretty much born in a thunderstorm. Baby Dot, other than the dot and the ears, does seem like a sturdy and healthy bun. Well, it's still early days yet, baby bunnies go through all sorts of changes for the first two months.
This is the fawn sibling of the lilac bunny. They are three weeks old at this point and the lilac is bigger than the fawn. Not sure why, although that can also change in a week. Baby bunnies are always changing at this age. The little fawn has lovely color, hopefully the density of color will remain. It does have a dirty nose at the moment. It had been sneezing yesterday a little but now there doesn't seem to be any more sneezing and the dirt on the nose seems left over from yesterday. I'll watch and see how the baby does, perhaps it had a bit of cold which kept it from gaining as much weight as the other one?
Not sure how this silly rooster got named, usually they get made into soup. But, this is now 'Ricky the Rooster' so maybe we won't make him into soup right away. Maybe later. Maybe not at all. There had been four roosters, now there's just the biggest one left so perhaps one big rooster is better than many smaller ones?