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
A Silver Fox breeder messaged me 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, her, and me. Her rabbit had a brother, and the next thing I knew I was also buying a rabbit.
I made arrangements to pick up the brothers from the transporter and drop the one off at his new owner's place. I took a better look at Astro Man, as he was named, the next day, and I was pleased. Once he molts, I think his fur is going to be very nice. So, I have another one in quarantine!
The other bad thing in this story is my husband had been teasing me about how we could switch the rabbits as hers won over the one we bought...how would she know? "They have been shown. They have been tattooed. So, just get that crazy out of your head!"
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, but he seemed unresponsive. I sat down to just hold him as I saw his eyes begin 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 that day!
I gave it a few more minutes, and I felt his heartbeat slower and stronger. His breathing was steady. 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 passed, he is hopping around like nothing happened.
I swear rabbits do stuff just to make me crazy!