The Good
These past few weeks really swooshed by! So imagine my surprise that I had a reminder on my phone that Starry Knight and Twilight have completed their quarantine as of today. This is very good!
I had them in a soft quarantine as this was my second buy from Silver Lox and I had spent quite a bit of time there looking over all her rabbits, which were quite healthy. I am so excited about Starry Knight, but I am very glad I did get some Kevlar sleeves, because he will seem to be calm after I first get him out of the cage and will seem relaxed after a time then suddenly he just goes wild trying to get away, even screaming, although I am not hurting him. He is not vicious and does not try to bite, he is just scared. I will be working with him even more now that I have these sleeves and, yes, they do offer quite a bit of protection. Even though I have kept his nails well trimmed, he is particularly good leaving bloody scratches, but not one scratch through the sleeves yet—I am so happy to report!
Twilight is equally shy of being taken out of the cage, but she is far more relaxed with being held and looked over. I am still quite please with both of them.
The Bad
My friend Hannah Yost at Renaissance Farmstead contacted me through Messenger to say she had done a bad thing and before she could type in her explanation, I already was in the process of writing "You bought another rabbit?" Oh, yes, she had, of course! She was finalizing her deal when before I knew it, I was whisked into a four-way conversation with the breeder, the transporter, Hannah, and me. She was buying a junior buck from Amir Softic of Carrot Gardens in New York, who would be at show where the transporter would pick him up. He had two bucks, but Hannah already had laid claim on the one with better fur at the time, so...let me just say that there are friends that are just very bad influences on you and, yet, you just love them. So, after talking it over with my husband, because I really only had one rabbit that had show potential, I decided to buy the brother. I also asked that he be shown. Comments on the two boys were similar, but, of course, Hannah's buck won Best Opposite Sex of Breed (BOSB) as a junior!
I made arrangements to pick up the brothers on Thursday night and drop of Hannah's rabbit at her place. Traffic was Atlanta, I have come to describe it that way. We left at 4:00 for what should have a been about a two-hour drive. Arrived just before 7:00, made it to Hannah's at 9:00 as it was turning dark and home around 10:30. I took a better look at Astro Man, as he was named, the next day and I am pleased. Once he molts, I think his fur is going to be very nice. So, I have another one in quarantine!
The other bad of this story is my husband had been teasing me how we could switch the rabbits...how would she know? "They are being shown. They have been tattooed. So, just get that crazy out of your head!" Even so, he still refers to her rabbit as "our rabbit that we left at Hannah's."
The Just Plain Crazy!
Every now and then a rabbit does something I have never seen any rabbit do before. I have been raising them for seven years and you would think I have seen about everything, but, no, there is always some new antic to try to shock the human and today crazy was in my rabbitry. I was cleaning the rabbit cages, because we did not get to it this weekend. As I was hosing down the slanted plastic that makes the droppings fall into the gutter behind the cages, the XCY-3 bunnies decided to go into major freak out mode...as if we do not clean at least once a week every week. I saw two going in circles as one jumped up to the top of the cage and then came back down catching one that was running in circles and slip, falling on its side.
Then it just lay there with its eyes open and stiffening and pulling its head back. Typically, that is what rabbit keepers would identify as death throes. I gently brought it out of the cage, checking the mark in its ear to see it was the buck. His eyes were still open and but he seemed unresponsive. I sat down to just hold him as I saw his eyes began to start to looking around, but he could not move. All I could think of was he either broken his back or was dying of fright and I would need to cull him...and I was not planning to process a rabbit in the heat of the day today!
I gave it a few more minutes and I felt his heart beat slower and stay strong. He breathing was steadied. Okay, probably a spinal injury. I pinched the toes on his back legs and he did not move them. I decided to place him in an empty cage to see if he could stand and also so I could finish the cleaning as it was getting hotter. To my surprise, he sat. Having had a pet rabbit decades ago with a spinal injury, I realized that it might not be that at all. He did not move around much, but he was using all his legs, so I guess he just really had the wind knocked out of him and was stunned. Now that an hour has past, he is hopping around like nothing happen.
I swear rabbits do stuff just to make me crazy!