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- This topic has 6sd replies, 6 voices, and was last updated 11 years, 5 months ago by
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Pete is an eastern cottontail, and he adopted us while we were living with my parents.
A neighbor had done some impromptu landscaping and destroyed the form (bunny nest) by accident.
About the same time a dog down the street got his jaws on a healthy adult eastern cottontail. Originally 5 bunnies were found wandered into our yard (3 houses down from the landscaping); one collapsed from hunger/exhaustion, 2 didn’t have their eyes open yet, and 2 had open eyes and were leading the others. A couple hours later we were down to 2 bunnies; and one of them seemed to have suffered some injuries, and too much stress. We did what we could but soon it was only Peter. He was dropper-fed formula made from kitten milk and bunny vitamins, and carefully weaned for the next 2-3 weeks.
Since then he has been growing by leaps and bounds.
Originally it was our intent to re-introduce him to the wild, but quickly realized he would not make it on his own. He had no fear of predators–even when we first found him. He was fascinated by cats, owls, and hawks. The only thing that did seem to scare him was being outside or hearing loud motors. So he found a permanent home with us. He’s become bonded to our cat, Zoey, who adores him like he was a kitten.
He enjoys running through the house, inter-species tag, bouncing on the bed, and organizing his toys.
At 4 months he weighed 1lb 13oz, but unfortunately I need a new scale to update his weight. He’s getting to be a big boy!
He’s 23 weeks old and we’re hoping to have him around for a long time. -
I realize by most standards he’ll never be what people consider a big boy, but that was more in reference to the difference in size since he first came to be with us. He was just so tiny!
As far as rehabbing him, we did bring him down to talk to a local rehabber a couple weeks ago. They weren’t too confident in him making it for very long if he was released, and since I was already growing attached to him I wasn’t about to argue.He had some minor injuries from the landscaping accident, but they were mostly superficial. His ears and his little leg have healed nicely.
My avatar picture is him after he’d been with us for about 2 weeks.
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