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Alright, all…I need advice because I’m a sucker and I’ve caught ANOTHER stray bunny!
My job this week is at a local city college, which has a huge herd of domestic rabbits. They’ve been out there for generations, though, and the entire college-community has adopted them as mascots, and there are water dispensers, pellet dispensers, and piles of greens left everywhere for them. Not as good as having homes, but many of these bunnies have never lived anywhere else or been pets, so they’re doing pretty good, IMO!
So, on Saturday, I spent my lunch break feeding them parsley. And saw a new bunny, that was obviously not part of the herd, was colored differently (English Spot colored, not black or brown), and who wasn’t even that dirty. And I snatched it up, and now I have another bunny. Sigh.
I can’t tell if it’s a boy or a girl. I can’t see obvious boy-parts…thought I found them yesterday, but then found nipples this morning and thought does that mean it’s a girl? A PREGNANT girl?! I called my friend who works at the shelter I adopted Lizzy from, and she said, no, nipples don’t mean anything necessarily either way, and that she would sneak the little foundling into the shelter, even though they’re staggering under all of the Easter bunnies that have been dumped there recently.
But she can’t take the bunny (I’m calling it “Little”) for a couple of days, and meanwhile, I’m doing all sorts of justifying about why I should keep it. Like, if it’s full-grown, and a female, my BF could take it and bond it to his only-bun Thumper! The bun has sort of that short-head, short-ear characteristic of a dwarf, and this bun is small…Maybe 2.5lb? So I thought maybe it’s an English Spot/Dwarf mix? But if it’s a boy and only a juvenile, there’s no way we could keep it. ‘Course, the only way I guess to know for sure is to take it to the vet, and I don’t really have the money to spend on a “maybe” vet appointment right now…
I should just give Little to the shelter….but he/she is SO cute! Cage-aggressive, but obviously only out of fear. Once you get past the pouncing/biting/growling phase, Little settles right in for 10minutes of nose-rubs. Going to make a great pet after some initial effort…
What do you all think?
And of course, here are pictures (No, this definitely isn’t Lizzy! Little’s about 1/2-2/3 her size. And Lizzy’s not even 5lb!)!
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aw man… the infamous poopy-butt. Remy had it when I first took him home. The vet suggested I take a comb to it, but I found that a wet paper towel worked better. I didn’t even have to put him on his back… I just slipped it under him and wiped willy-nilly, and he ended up sticking his butt up, lol. Probably felt refreshing
I’m glad you’re taking him to the vet. You’ll feel better about it in the long run.
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Hi guys!
Here’s the update.
This week has SUCKED!
Was supposed to take Little to the vet on Tuesday, but got home Monday night to grey Robbie fur EVERYWHERE, and Lizzy and Robbie’s pen all knocked out of shape, rugs askew, litter and hay kicked everywhere. There was a little bit of white Lizzy fur, too. I have no idea what happened. I know Robbie was shedding a LOT, and I thought about grooming him, but didn’t have time because of Little…and he was much cleaner and not clumped-up with dead fur after whatever their incident was! Maybe he knocked all his loose fur out chasing Lizzy? I can’t imagine her being aggressive. She just doesn’t. She runs away, and NEVER fights back.
Neither of them had any wounds, but everytime I turned my back, Robbie was giving her the evil eye. I ended up having to separate them for the night. I canceled the vet appointment, because the plan was for my BF to skip work to watch Lizzy and Robbie sit in the bathtub, spray-bottle in hand. But he ended up not being able to get out of work, so I separated them for the day, as well.
(Meanwhile, as you can imagine, Little was getting no attention. Except for having to scrub up massive amounts of poopy-butt mess EVERYWHERE constantly!)
When I got home from work, I drove them around in the car, and dumped them in the bathtub, and forced them back in their pen together, and ended up having to sleep under the dining room table to be next to them to make sure Robbie didn’t kill Lizzy. (Normally I would have set them up in an extra pen in the bedroom–but the extra pen in the bedroom had Little in it!) Obviously, I thought that Little’s presence caused all this, and immediately called my friend at the shelter, and told her that Little HAD to go! But apparently, that shelter has had 10 bunnies, all of whom were sick, dumped on them in the past week, they’re at double their capacity, and they can’t pay their huge vet bill, so they can’t take any more bunnies to the vet, because they’re so far behind in payment (vet won’t let them). So the head of the shelter said there was no way they could take another bunny, and we started concocting ideas for sneaking Little in.
Oh, and did I mention that Little is EXTREMELY cage-aggressive? Likes to be pet–if you reach straight in toward the bunny, it’s all good. But if you reach for litter box, stray bit of hay, anything else you get attacked. No warning. No growl, no pounce–goes straight for the jugular with fangs bared. And Little will RUN ACROSS the pen to get at you! Distance does no good! I started wearing heavy work gloves to reach in the pen, and Little was SO confused when I didn’t flinch! Got even madder, and started trying to climb my arm to try to find something to bite, and when that didn’t work, ran over to the stuffed cow and savaged it out of frustration!
Lovely creature, between the epic poopy-butt and the vicious biting and the causing my bunnies to break up. So, the plan was that Little had to go ASAP.
But then Lizzy and Robbie made up after 2 days, and now they don’t even seem to care if I touch Little and then pet them. So maybe their tiff was unrelated?
And so far today, no poopy butt. (Although that’s what I thought yesterday, and then got home after being at work for just a couple hours to a sea of dried nastiness…including on my bedroom walls! Little is now back in the utility room, just in case!)
And after 2 days of attacking a glove, and the glove neither caring nor punishing, Little has decided that maybe it’s not too terrible if the glove picks up hay, as long as it does so carefully.
So I was supposed to take Little to my friend this afternoon. But I started feeling guilty, and like maybe this rabbit could turn out okay, after all. And the evil animal hospital up the street that I hate actually agreed to tell me what gender Little is for free and it turns out I’ve been calling Little “he” erroneously! Little’s a girl! And it would be REALLY awful to dump a behavior-problem rabbit on a shelter that is at double-capacity, especially when we’re going to want to adopt a girlfriend for Thumper in a few months (he STILL hasn’t gotten that rabbit neutered! GRRR!). Sooo..I guess I’m keeping the vicious vampire bunny. (Even though she did manage to get me really good this morning–grabbed my finger with her fangs, and when I jerked away, she was dangling by her teeth from my finger in the air—and she got pink blood stains on her white fur. Wretched beastie!)
My friend is going to try to get me the shelter’s discount with the vet to get Little spayed, which will be a huge help (they’re just grateful I’ve decided to keep Little–one less to worry about!).
If anyone has any spare change, this shelter seriously needs help. It’s the one I got Lizzy from, and they try very hard…And they are seriously thousands of dollars behind in vet payments, so if anybun gets sick, the bunny won’t be able to get treatment… Please check out their website to give donations. They’re set up through PayPal and everything. http://www.mybunny.org/
Here’s the vicious beastie pretending to be sweet and innocent. I don’t have any pictures of her in attack-mode–hard to work a camera with a bunny dangling from your hand!
We have a vet appointment this afternoon. Sorry for rambling on so long!
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Glad you enjoyed it! It’s funny in retrospect. At the time, my thoughts were a little less kind! On a side-note, my BF is being very supportive about this whole thing, but he secretly fears things that bite. He denies it, but–for example–he won’t go within 10′ of a horse because they’re big and have big teeth and he thinks that means he’ll get bitten. I’m getting immune to bunny attacks, but I can tell he’s secretly terrified of the little hellion! LOL! I’d better get her aggression dealt with before I send her home with BF to be Thumper’s girlfriend! Poor BF would be afraid to be in his own apartment!
TARM–you have NO IDEA how much more I love Lizzy now for being the EASY one!!! I tell Robbie and Little that they’d better watch it, or I’ll take them back to the parks where I found them! Lizzy and I would live very quietly without Robbie the psycho and Little the vicious!
Pam–Sign me up! (I need more Sammy stories, btw!)
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Update post-vet:
Little is definitely a girl, almost-definitely not-spayed, hopefully not pregnant, and has fooled all the nurses into thinking she’s the cutest, best-behaved little girl-bun in the world! (I can feel Lizzy radiating jeolousy from across the room! Also, Little only bites people she knows (actually, I guess she’s only bites ME!), so they didn’t get to see her in her full-splendor!)
Estimated age–not quite 1 year old. Teeth, ears, and all other body parts look good. 3 lbs of bunny-disapproval!
Fecal test did show Coccidia, though. Giving her “Albon Liquid”–supposedly tastes like banana?? They showed me how to give it to her at my request (theoretically I’ve done this before, but I always manage to get more on their faces and my floor than in their mouths, so I thought I’d ask for advice!). Nurse picked Little up, all 4 legs akimbo, stuck syringe in front of mouth (I thought–her TEETH are there! How are you going to force her to drink through her TEETH?!), and then Little SLURPED IT ALL UP! And then, when the nurse tried to pull the syringe out, she couldn’t, because Little had clamped her teeth on the syringe and wouldn’t let go.
The second I put her in her pen at home, she flopped out on her side and passed out. I haven’t been bit in at least 8 hours. If she doesn’t get going again, my hands might heal!
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I am just catching up on this thread. Wow! What a kind thing for you to do! Sounds like Little has a “big” attitude when it comes to touching her stuff! I have had bunnies like this before. Rucy was, Jack was, and Vivian, I was told is cage territorial, but I haven’t seen that side…yet.
I am wondering if someone dumped her there with the other rabbits – since you said she was clean and “new”. They might have done this due to her behavior. If so- BOOOOO! But I am glad you took her on though it has caused some chaos!
I know with Rucy and Jack, I would wear gloves in the beginning to prevent myself from reinforcing their negative behavior by quickly pulling away. (Though it worked with mine because they were spayed/neutered). Little might also be working with the hormones, so that may get a bit better once she is spayed.
Hopefully your two on back on track so you can stop sleeping under the dining room table. Believe me – I understand that too!
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