Paul Szmal: And welcome back to FLX Morning on Finger Lakes Newsradio. It is 816 and joining me in studio are James and Casey, representing the Wildlife Rockstars. Hey guys. Good morning. How's everything going this morning?
James, Casey: Everything's been good. Good, good.
Paul Szmal: Well, we have a special guest here, so why don't one of you go ahead and do the honors and introduce our special animal of the day.
James, Casey: So this is Cindy Lopper Hopper, a lion head rabbit. So lion head rabbits are from Belgium and France, but they are not a wild rabbit as they are a species that is crossbred between two other, a Netherland dwarf and a Swiss fox to kind of make this rabbit. This is because they have what's called this mane here. This mane is very favorable for pet owners, but that comes with a couple of things. You need to brush them pretty regularly if they're single-maned, you have to brush them once a week, twice a week. But if they are double-maned, that has to be almost a daily or every other day. Because what happens is their hair gets all knatted and then they will groom themselves and eat that dead hair and that's not good for them.
Paul Szmal: Oh geez. Yeah, I definitely wouldn't want to eat dead hair for sure. So how much does Cindy weigh?
James, Casey: So Cindy is about, they get up to about three and a half pounds. So she probably weighs what? About three and a half. Three and a half pounds. So she's about full grown, about 10 inches in size. They're a fairly small rabbit. She's got, the back of her ears are black and she's got a little tuft of black fur on the top of her head between her ears and a little more around the eyes. And then there are some other dark spot markings on the backside of her body, but the rest of it is a pure white.
So yeah, we have Cindy Lapphopper and Joan Jett. Joan Jett is completely black with a couple of white stripes. So they can come in a lot of earthy colors. So like light browns, blacks, and whites. And that's why they became a very popular pet in Europe and North America in like the 1990s because they were just very cute, cuddly, and rabbits in general, people like to have them as pets. They're one of the most pets in America.
Paul Szmal: Yeah. How many different types of rabbits are there?
James, Casey: A lot. Yeah, very many.
Paul Szmal: Wow. Now what does Cindy lose, Cindy's diet consist of?
James, Casey: So she's a herbivore, so she strictly will eat fruits and vegetables, but we have like protein for them to eat and these pellets that they will get every day. So rabbit feed. So we'll give them that. We'll give them greens, leafy greens and other things like that, which they will eat every day. But so rabbits too are super playful. So we also give them a lot of enrichment, like cups and toys that they will throw around and chew on, which is very important for their care.
Paul Szmal: I didn't realize rabbits did that. I thought they were fairly docile in captivity most of the time. So they're playful.
James, Casey: They're social animals in a sense, so they like to just kind of throw around stuff. We give them cups, which Cindy will either throw them around or attempt to stack in a sense, which is really cool to see. So as a pet, people kind of get them just to kind of look at them, but they need a lot of care and attention. They're a very needy animal.
Paul Szmal: Well, you mentioned the brushing and with the thickness of the fur that she has, I can see where having to brush her a couple of times a week is going to be a necessity.
James, Casey: Yeah, it's just they got so much hair and they will shed it. And then in April, when that comes around, they will just kind of drop a lot of it. So that's when you got to keep up with that maintenance of brushing them more frequently.
Paul Szmal: Yeah, because spring shedding.
James, Casey: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Paul Szmal: We're talking with the wildlife rock stars here on FLX Morning and Cindy the rabbit joining us. Is Cindy a retired animal or is she active in a lot of the presentations?
James, Casey: She comes to a lot of our shows. She's one of our great education animals. So she is really good for our program too because she is a good therapy animal as you can brush her and pet her. So when we take her to show, she's usually one of our really good touch animals that the kids can actually pet and actually feel the fur, which is really, really cool to kind of for them to understand how much hair they actually have and how much work they need to.
Paul Szmal: Yeah, can you actually scoot her over this? I want to check this out for myself. Wow. Yeah, that is soft fur. That is really soft fur. That's pretty amazing. You wouldn't expect that.
James, Casey: Yeah. And one interesting about their mane is, um, so there are angora rabbits, but lionhead rabbits manes are actually made of wool. So that can also be, um, brushed out of them. Um, and if needed can be used to make scarves or different clothing items.
Paul Szmal: Oh, no, no, no kidding. No kidding. Now here's something I've always wondered about. And I asked this question actually before we, uh, before we got in the air, because I've been around rabbits a lot, especially going to County fairs in the summertime, you go to the 4-H tent and you want to look and see all the different animals that are on display. You got to go through the rabbit area and check out all the different rabbits that are on display. But I never hear them making any noise. Do rabbits actually make any kind of noise?
James, Casey: So yeah, they will make very light tone noises. They're not going to be like a Guinea pig or a rodent species that makes a lot of loud squeaks and stuff like that. It's mostly just kind of nose twitches, ear twitches, and other, uh, physical stuff like that.
Paul Szmal: Okay. Uh, I know you guys are, uh, getting ready for the spring and the summer season and part of that. And it's something that Cindy would probably be included in our, uh, some of the birthday parties that are being offered. Is this something new or is this something you guys have done all along?
James, Casey: So we have offered birthday parties for a while. Um, but our new exciting thing is with the new property we purchased, we now have a neutral remote site, um, where it's more easily accessible for people to come to us, have a big, beautiful landscape to be around. Um, and also be included in having not only our native and exotic species that they can, um, get to engage with, but also some agricultural animals. So we'll be still having our Wildlife Rockstars, but also adding the addition of Bridges Barnyard, um, which gives a little bit of more of an up-close view of some agricultural animals. And that will be starting, um, around July 1st.
Paul Szmal: And how, how do people go about booking those?
James, Casey: So you can go to our website, so wildliferockstars.com or bridgesforbraininjury.org. Um, you can email, um, Sarah Saylor, who is our Wildlife Education Director at S-S-A-Y-L-O-R at bridgesforbraininjury.org. Um, and you can always check out our Facebook. Um, if you want to see any other events that we may have coming up, we do have kind of an exciting thing right now for any animal and college basketball fans. We kind of have a March Madness going on with our animals. Um, so we got a bracket of different one of our animals. Um, so if there's anyone that's your favorite, you can check out our Facebook page. Um, there are posts being made about every day, um, and vote for your favorite animal and maybe they'll be the winner.
Paul Szmal: All right. Well, I appreciate you guys stopping in with Cindy this morning. Thank you for being here.
James, Casey: Thank you.
Paul Szmal: All right. Wildlife Rockstars joining us here on FLX Morning. It's 823.
