About a month ago we caught Matilda sitting by the top of the stairs that go into our basement (the only stairs in our whole house). At the time she was just sitting there, looking – and after this she hopped away, but just the other day we heard some noises from the basement stairs, and sure enough… there was Matilda, two-thirds of the way down into the basement.

Sadly I didn’t get a photo of this, being too much in shock at what she was doing. And in true Matilda style, after being seen she immediately turned around and scrambled back up the stairs.

A day or two later we heard her try again, but this time she only made it down 1 stair before coming back up, so we didn’t get there in time to see anything. But we suspect it’s only a matter of time now before we find Matilda sitting in the basement.

Now, for context, Matilda has never experienced stairs in her life, and prior to now she’s completely ignored the basement stairs. But she’s a clever girl, and despite the stairs being rather narrow (it’s an old house; these stairs would never pass code nowadays) she managed to get down most of them. Strangely, she had more trouble coming back up – I suspect because she was trying to hurry and doesn’t have much traction on the smooth floor.

Long time readers will remember one of our prior buns – Betsy – had done something similar. She’d never shown the slightest interest in stairs until one morning we woke up and couldn’t find her… only to eventually look down into the basement, where we found her sitting quietly near the bottom of the stairs. She’d gone down some time in the night and presumably couldn’t get back up (she let us pick her up and carry her up, and never tried to go back down again for the rest of her life).

Hopefully Matilda’s little adventure whet her appetite for experiencing stairs, but if not… expect pictures of a certain bunny in the basement!