7:23 p.m. - 2004-05-26
Tax Deductable Rabbits
Is it possible to have hypochondria by proxy?

I think I'm a hypochondriac bunny caretaker.

We took Miss Bunny to see Alvin yesterday because....she sneezed. It wasn't just any old sneeze. It was the goopiest sneeze I have ever seen on any animal, including Bruce and myself. It was great steaming gobs of goopy goop issuing forth from Miss Bunny's schnozzola.

It was such a great, huge gob of goo that, between Miss Bunny and I, it took about five minutes to get her cleaned up.

She's been acting a little punky this week (read: instead of running like a maniac to get her treats she's been merely coming at a trot) and so I felt she really needed to be seen. So we schlepped her down to Birmingham.

Of course, the air conditioning in our car sucks, which meant that I had to sit in the back with her, misting her ears and fanning her so she wouldn't overheat. She arrived with the fur on her ears all screwed down from the misting, which greatly amused the vet techs and Alvin.

"It's the retro look, the greasy kid stuff!" they laughed.

While I explained the problem, Alvin listened with a funny little smile on his face. I swear he was probably thinking something like "My God this woman is neurotic - if only I could give her horse tranquilisers!!" He did check her out pretty thoroughly, though, and said he was inclined to think it was allergies and not the Pasteurella resurfacing in her lungs.

He also put a Florasine stain in her eyes to see if it would emerge from her nostrils. It didn't.

"Don't panic!!" he said. (Too late.) "It's probably just scarred from the abcess. All it means is that there's no way for the tear ducts to drain, so they'll back up to her eye. It's why she's had some tearing lately."

He gave her a shot of steroids and then he and Bruce talked about a large alligator snapping turtle Alvin had just rehabilitated from getting a fish hook through its esophagus. He had just released it into the Cahaba River.

From iis shell size he thought it was at least fifty years old. Wow!

Meanwhile, Chris, the vet tech, and I went to visit her Amazon parrot, who was in the clinic being treated for feather pulling. Poor Leroy - he had plucked his whole front, and he was obviously not happy about being at the clinic, especially with Chris paying so much attention to the other birds. Chris thought he'd only be there a couple of days before she took him home.

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In other bunny news: here's something to make you groan and roll your eyes. We are getting our first foster bunnies next week.

Feisty and Napkin (yes!! those are their names!!! Aren't they fabulous?!!!) have been in foster care for about a year and a half, and no one, not one person, has been interested in adopting them. And, truth to tell, they are not the cutest bunnies. They are kind of raggedy looking and they are overweight.

See what I mean?

And isn't the whole point to get a bunny who's cute? I mean, forget the fact that these bunnies love to be held and have no personality problems. It's all about cuteness!!

Ahem. Sorry. Sometimes I can't help but spew sarcasm.

So anyway, I have been crazy about these particular rabbits because they remind me of Mirage. They are Dutch mixes, and if Feisty's blaze went all the way up his nose, he could pass for Mirage's brother.

Linda, the HRS foster director, knows my little obsession with them. Today she called me, supposedly to ask how our trip to Dauphin Island was. I could tell she had something on her mind.

We talked for a few minutes and then she came out with it. One of the bunnies they had rescued last week from a shelter had surprised them with baby bunnies two days ago. And, on top of this, another one of the fosterers broke her hip on Friday, and so Linda has had to take in her four rabbits as well.

There's just no more room at the inn, and Linda was looking for some relief. A decision had been made recently to make Feisty and Napkin Sanctuary bunnies on the basis of unadoptablity. She knew I was in love with them. Would I consider taking them, even for just a couple of months?

Damn straight I would!! I called Bruce, and saint that he is, he agreed.

Could anyone ask for a better guy?

This weekend we'll do some bunny proofing, and next week we'll bring them home. It's possible they will still be adopted, and I am braced for that. But, the reality is, we will probably have them for a long time.

We've been jokingly calling them Mirage's hillbilly cousins, due to their generally disheveled looks. I'm looking forward to their personalities though. You can never have too many huggable rabbits.

And the most wacky part? Because they are technically "Owned" by HRS, all of their food, their hay, their vet visits, are tax deductable!! Tax deductable rabbits!!

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