Hi, Sarita!

Yes, I’ll e-mail my friend who volunteers there, too… I’m honestly afraid to ask because that’s the rescue that sends out frantic messages that end up in BinkyBunny’s Rescue section about how if 20 buns don’t get adopted immediately, the shelter will start euthanizing… I doubt I will be able to convince the people in charge over there to expend any time/energy on a half-wild beastie 40 miles away when they’re at double their capacity… But I’ll email my friend the volunteer, just in case she has a thought…

LPT, I totally agree with you! I don’t know what people are thinking, getting animals on whims, without thinking of the responsibility or the repercussions… I know some people who’ve had children in the same haphazard manner…makes me sick…

I’m waiting for responses from my friend at one rescue, and cold-calls to two other rescues to be returned… The problem is, if this poor guy has been essentially on his own for minimum of 1 year, he’s going to need a bath (he’s awfully mangy-looking), and probably flea-treatment, and a spay/neuter, and some serious socialization, and who knows what-all else. I’m still trying to figure out what in the world BF and I are going to do with Thumper…and we just stole Flower, too. That’s $800 in bunny-surgeries…. And I can’t bring the poor flea-ridden thing into my apartment to spread whatever he’s got to Lizzy…

Maybe my next call should be to my vet to see what they think…

People suck. Easter bunnies should be outlawed.

You know you have a good boyfriend when…

Text message conversation…
Me: I just went to the park to feed Robby. Didn’t see him, but left some for him. I’m nuts.
Him: Youre sweet.
Me: Why?
Him: You feed homeless bunnies.

He should be getting me committed…

Called my vet, and they gave me the number for a rescue I already left a message at.

I’m torn about whether I should be feeding him or not. You’re not supposed to feed wild animals because it makes them dependent on humans. But what about a domesticated animal gone wild out of necessity? THEN what do you do?

If I walk into a rescue with him, will they turn him away, do you think? What if I pretend like I’m a clueless non-bunny-person who just happened to find him? (What if he bites and claws the @$&&^ out of me while I try catching him?)

You should have seen me at the park just now. Waiting in the car with my grocery bag of endive. Looking around to make sure nobody was watching, because I didn’t want to draw attention to him…don’t want teenagers torturing him or anything. Crouching down and talking to an empty hole in the side of the bandshell (he wasn’t home, as I mentioned.).

One more crazy talking to empty space in a park in Long Beach!

Hi, all!

Thanks so much for your concern about Robby!

I don’t have much of an update…

Neither of the shelters I left messages at called me back.

My friend at the shelter I got Lizzy from basically agreed with Markus…that if he’s been there a year, he’s basically adapted as well as he can, and has obviously found shelter and means of avoiding predators. She offered to help me catch him if I wanted to, but pointed out, for a bunny used to a whole park’s worth of freedom, it might be very unfair to trap him in a shelter in a cage, where he won’t get much outside time. She said it would obviously guarantee that he’d be fed and safe from predators, but probably wouldn’t make his quality of life any better for him…

I don’t know anything about humane traps. I’ve been roaming around contemplating throwing a sweatshirt over him, and scooping him up, and…wrestling him into my car? By myself? Without getting bit?

I don’t have an outside area. I live in an apartment. And all my extra bunny-stuff is in San Diego with the BF and Thumper and Flower… I guess I could trap him in my little laundry room, and take all the chemicals out, and hope he doesn’t eat the walls!

I stopped by the park on my way home (I was at work at yet ANOTHER park 9am-10:30pm today. Apparently, they’re OVER-RUN with rabbits. Everybody who works there has taken a stray bunny home, and they offered me any one of the ones still left there! My electricians are under strict instructions to scare away any rabbits before I catch sight of them and need to save them, too! They thought I was kidding…I was absolutely serious!). I went to the grocery store to get some greens for Lizzy, and swung past the park…skunks EVERYWHERE. So I didn’t get to see if Robby was around (yes, I’m dumb enough to roam around a dark park by myself in the middle of the night, but NOT dumb enough to get sprayed by a skunk!). Have to leave at 7am tomorrow, so if I can get up early enough, I’ll stop by on my way out of town.

My lead electrician was contemplating getting a rabbit, until he settled on a cocker spaniel (I know, what was he THINKING!?). Apparently, he used to have both as a kid, and they’d take turns chasing each other! So of course, I’m trying to coerce him into thinking his dog needs a friend! He thinks that if I manage to catch Robby, he can probably find him a home, but it may be in somebody’s backyard.

Of course, if I catch him, I would want to keep him, which is BAD!

Sigh.

Remind me what kind of flea treatment is good for bunnies, just in case? And how long does it take to work?

And WHY do I get such hare-brained ideas? Pun intended!

Davita, or TuckerBunz, come on out! I’ll need help chasing him around the park (dodging the police, who will probably think I’m a loon on drugs!), and if you take him away fast, maybe I won’t want to keep him!

LPT, I don’t know what the deal is out here.  Maybe they get released the same amount everywhere, but they survive better in parks here, since we don’t have snow or too many predators (there are coyotes and bobcats and mountain lions 20 miles away in the hills, but it’s too urban for them here)?  I don’t know.  I’m going to have to start walking through parks with my eyes closed…

I’ve gone to the Long Beach park every day this week to see if I can find Robby, and haven’t seen him.  I leave him lettuce, though.  I don’t know where he’s gone to…

I had a grand plan to make my BF come up on Monday and stake-out Robby’s den–I’d called the vet to make an appoinment for wild-bunny-checkup, and everything!–but now the BF found out he has 2 weeks to move, and I might end up having to take Thumper and Flower.  He was going to give them back to his mother if he couldn’t find a place that would allow them…I flipped out, and now he has PROMISED they stay with him or with me!  She was going to compromise by putting them in a GARAGE! 

Anyway, I don’t know that I can catch/foster him now, if I have to house 3 unbonded bunnies, 2 of which are not fixed…  Argh!  Too many bunnies need saving… I don’t know how to help them all…

So I went to the park again this evening.  I’d been going in the morning, and Robby hadn’t been in his hole.  Going in the evening was the ticket, I guess…

I called Robby as I walked toward the building, and he stuck his head out of the hole.  When he saw me, he hopped out of the hole and ran up to me.  I gave him some lettuce, and he let me pet him just a little bit, although he definitely flinched a little.  There were tons of people in the park, and a kid walked by and saw me with Robby, and I didn’t want anyone to get any ideas, so I put the rest of the lettuce in his hole, behind the grate.  And then Robby did a little binky and ran in a circle before hopping back into his hole.

The half-wild bunny CAME WHEN I CALLED!  Maybe he just plays everybody for food, but he didn’t act like that at the beginning of last week, so I don’t think so…

%^&$ it.  I’m bringing that rabbit home.  We have a 2:30 appointment at the vet.  I have to pull an all-nighter to get my paperwork done, so I can go bunny shopping in the morning and bunny-catching in the afternoon.

Wish me luck!

The bunny-hunt has been successful!

Luckily, the park is pretty empty at 1:30pm on a weekday.  I got there just as a parking enforcement guy started roaming around, so I had my fingers crossed that Robby would cooperate so I wouldn’t get arrested for harrassing the wildlife!  I had Lizzy’s carrier filled with hay and veggies, and called Robby, and he hopped straight out of his hole right away.  He went straight for the lettuces, and I waited until he was mostly in the carrier on his own to give him a little push on the butt, and OILA!  Captured rabbit!  He didn’t even realize it at first..didn’t seem to mind my pushing him, and just kept eating!  Until he noticed the doors were closed…

Poor guy shook in the carrier all the way to the 2:30 vet appointment…  The vet says he’s an unaltered male (forgot to ask for an age estimate!  Rats!), and that he’s surprisingly healthy, for all his mangy appearance!  He’s got some healed-over battle scars, but healthy teeth, no sign of illness, good looking feet, and is INFESTED with fleas!  So we got the bloodwork done anticipating a neuter, picked up some kitten Revolution, and came home.

He’s all set up in the tallest X pen I could find in the laundry room, because it has linoleum floors and is far far from Lizzy Diva Bunny, who would NOT appreciate a new friend just yet…especially one as unkempt as poor Robby.  He’s explored a little bit, but he keeps going back to the carrier, so I’ll just leave that in there for a while until he gets more settled.

Unfortunately, now I have to go to work.  Boo!

I hope he is ok while I’m gone.  I already heard a loud crash from the laundry room, and ran back there to find Robby cowering anew in the carrier…I think he must have tried to hop at/out of the pen and failed.  Good to know I got one tall enough!

Thanks for all your support!  I’m sure I’ll need more as I try to tame the feral beast!  (Markus, I did know that about Maryann, but I’d forgotten…so now you get to be my mentor!  Guide me, oh expert on wild beasties!  And I may get evicted, too, if I end up with Flower and Thumper in the bedroom!  Or they’ll arrest me for being a crazy bunny-collector!  Ears crossed the landlord stays as uninvolved as ever!)

Pictures soon, I promise!