rabbit trick

My son's bunny disappeared on Monday. This bunny, Hester (named after Hester Gray from the Anne of Green Gables series) is a cute little fluff-ball who lives with our eight chickens. She was there on Sunday evening when the kids put the chickens away for the night, but when they went out to feed them Monday morning, she was gone! The chicken coop has interior walls with straw behind them for insulation (this is Canada) that the bunny has been gnawing on all winter, so I thought maybe she had managed to get inside the walls. I ripped the interior walls out all around where she had been chewing, frantically searching for her, but to no avail. She was gone. How she could have escaped was a mystery to all of us. Every night this week, as the weather gets colder, we've been wondering where she is and how she is managing. How long could a pet bunny survive on her own around here? There was nothing we could do and I felt just awful about it.
On Saturday afternoon we thought we'd better get to fixing the walls in the chicken coop. The old interior walls were just hardboard and they needed replacing, so my wild frenzy of wall destruction wasn't anything we didn't need to do anyway. It could have been done more neatly though. I started by cleaning the floor. As I cleared away straw and, umm, other stuff, (remember, chicken coop) from along the back wall I heard something. A scuffle and a squeak. Jiminy Jillikers! Could the bunny be in the back wall?! She hadn't chewed a hole there; how was that possible?! I called the whole family in there to help rip the wall off. After all, if it wasn't the bunny I might need help with whatever it was. (Giant weasel, rabid squirrel, killer moth...who knows?) and if it was her, well, I didn't expect her to be in very good shape and I didn't want to be traumatized alone. (I know, really wussy. Better to traumatize my children than deal with a half-dead rabbit on my own. I'm not proud of myself, but there it is.) As my son tore away the wall, out popped the spunkiest little gray ball of fluff you could ever want to see! Negatively affected by being trapped in a wall for five days? Not this plucky gal! She's good to go. Water? Yes please! A little something to nibble on? Why, yes, I think so. Other than that, all's well.
So, how did she get there? The best we can work out is that she managed to get up into the loft, where there are no interior walls, and fall down the back between the interior and exterior walls. So we've taken measures to see that it can't happen again.
Life with animals; always an adventure!

This is Hester when she was just a wee little bunny.