Slowly Catching Up …
There are many times when we feel like it’s one step forward then two steps back. Put another way, I’m sure you know the old phrase, “when it rains, it pours”.
There for a while, we were beginning to believe that we’d never get ahead of the “bunny boom”. Well, remember we told you about baby Ivory having babies, herself? We’re about ready to get the babies fixed so they can get homes, too.
“Slowly” is the right word though .. If you think about it, we told you about getting Ivory and her siblings at the first of the year! This is August! These backyard breeders don’t know (nor care) what long-term effects they have on these poor little creatures.
But “catching up” is a relative term, to say the least. During the “bunny boom”, Neveah not only had a still-born litter, but had to be taken for a tooth extraction and then, later, an abcess removal from her jaw.
Lover Boy & Happy Boy were tossed like so much litter on a well-kept grassy avenue. They found their way to the porch of an empty house and a lady called us to come get them because she was too scared to approach them herself.
We received the four bunnies - Chocolate Drop, Mocha, Oreo and Cookie from a man that said, “We had four more, but they couldn’t take the heat .. These weren’t looking so good, so we thought we might ought to call you.”
Sunshine (Sunny) was returned by the lady that adopted her a year and a half ago because, “my 10-year-old has lost interest and I just don’t have time for it.”
Sparkles was brought to us by a concerned neighbor of the girl that had thrown him from her 2nd-story balcony once and had come down to take him back and “try again”. The girl was more than happy to let them have him - that way she didn’t have to kill it to get rid of it.
Then not long after that, we got Arizona Hot Boy on one of the hottest days of the summer (118 degrees). He was let go to simply fend for himself … The only thing I’m sure he was thinking of was finding shade!
Khandi and Katlin are sisters. They were dumped at one of our vet’s office with a baby no more than a day or two old (no doubt the reason they were tossed). Obviously, now, it was Khandi’s baby, but neither her nor Katlin showed any interest in nursing. This is a story just like Autumn and Ivory .. one had babies that didn’t live and the other was “sparked” into the “maternal mode” to have a successful litter.
The other sister, Katlin has since given us two more butterballs that we call Kits. There’s no telling how she’s feeding them so well. She’s barely big enough (or old enough) to have babies at all — much less care for them the way she does.
Somewhere about that time we received a call from a woman that needed to “get rid of” a couple of sandy colored rabbits with big ears. We had to tell her to hang onto them for a few days while we juggled hutches.
We never heard from her again, but the PetSmart in her area called with a need to give us a couple of sandy colored rabbits with big ears that had been left in a box on the curb sometime before the store opened. Those two are Azalea and Marigold — a couple of beautiful Palominos.
Patrick was another that was returned by an owner that had “no time for him anymore”.
Powder Puff is a beautiful white mini Angora that would make almost any rabbit owner jealous. A lady (using the term loosely) tossed him to us saying that he was more trouble than he was worth. There are others, but I remember this handsome fellow specifically.
Then, yesterday evening, we got Monsoon. He was named for the storm that was raging when he arrived. I’ll be devoting a story to him in a day or two.
… Did I say something about “catching up”? … silly me.
