5:46 p.m. - 2005-11-16
Awfulness! Just Awfulness!
I haven�t updated in a long time, ages really, because words cannot describe the awfulness of the last couple of months. Awfulness with a capital A � both the awfulness of my personal life and the total overlying awfulness of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, which has cast a pall over the whole South.
But, no matter what has been going on with me personally, my life is a non-stop ecstatic drooling bliss compared to what things are like for people directly affected by the hurricane. We have friends who have lost everything, and Huntsville is full of evacuees who are trying to settle here, at least until they can settle someplace else. The government is apparently useless, so local aid agencies are dealing with things the best they can.
So no matter what sort of depressing news I have to put in this journal, it�s nothing compared to what my life could be like right now. Yup, just call me Pollyanna. I�m counting my blessings.
If you all would like to read the most amazing and intense account of the Hurricane, please google "Operation Eden blog". (I can't get my links to work...) After you read it you�ll be a Pollyanna, too.
The first order of sadness? And the main reason I have not updated this journal? I didn�t want to talk about the death of Miss Bunny.
Though we thought she was going to live forever, Mirage proved us wrong. Her abscess finally got completely out of control, and no antibiotic we tried could keep it in check. I finally knew it was time to let her go when she stopped chewing everything in sight, and spent most of her time lying quietly with Loki.
I spent the night before we had her euthanized lying on the floor with her and it really became clear to me how much she was suffering and that it was time for us to stop being selfish and let her go. It was such a gut wrenching decision.
I won�t go into the euthanasia because it is just to sad, except to say that it was performed by Alvin, her dear friend as well as her veterinarian, and that Bruce, Loki and I were all with her. It was very quiet, and when it was over Bruce, Alvin and I all stood hugging each other for awhile.
The studio is so quiet without her. It�s been six weeks and I still can�t get used to it. I�m sure the angels in Rabbit Heaven don�t know what hit them. Even as I type I�m sure she is chewing the hems off their robes and breaking into the heavenly dried pineapple supply.
See you in Heaven, Miss Bunny. Try to behave yourself till we get there.
So, to cheer myself up, I agreed to go with Linda to Slidell, LA to bring supplies to a rabbit rescuer there. We also agreed to bring back two buns from Noah�s W*sh.
We wound up bringing back seven. Once rescue groups found out we were coming the rabbits started coming out of the woodwork. We have so little foster space, but if you had seen the conditions there you�d have decided that having rabbits in all three of your bathrooms was a good idea, too!
They are all slightly nutty, but who can blame them after what they have been through? One of them has a very serious fear of thunderstorms. He was evidently left alone in an apartment building during the hurricane. His fur is very matted, and I�m guessing he got into some of the infamous toxic water as well. His fosterer named him Slidell, and he�s quite a character when it isn�t thundering out. If you go into the bathroom off of our kitchen, he may even jump into the sink to greet you:
And as for the trip itself? You want to know what it was really like down there, so soon after the hurricane? Suffice to say, it was everything awful you have heard about. Around about Meridien, MS Linda and I started noticing all the trees were snapped in half. There are huge pine plantations around there, and for miles and miles of snapped pines and twisted guard rails. This photo, taken at a rest stop, doesn�t even begin to show the damage:
I didn�t really want to take too many pictures. I felt like it was so rude to act like a tourist when people were just devastated. So I only have this one photo, taken out the car window. Imagine this scene times about a hundred billion and you get a little idea of it:
In retrospect I wish I had taken more photos, especially of the Noah�s W*sh shelter. There were not only cats and dogs, but rabbits, ferrets, iguanas, a scarlet macaw�..every kind of animal imaginable. All in the most unbearable heat and humidity. And the insects � I saw dragonflies the size of small helicopters!
They were thrilled that we came for the bunnies, though only four were ready for release. The others were still being held for possible identification by their owners.
They were doing their best at the shelter, but now I really feel so strongly about including pets in disaster plans. And microchip!! Microchip your pet RIGHT NOW!!
Oh, yeah, I had a birthday.
And that was awful, too. At seven am the phone rang. It was a woman who was referred to me by Alvin because her bunny has an intestinal problem, and he had asked me to try and walk her through things like giving the bun fluids and syringe feeding.
For a week I had been trying to get this woman to do what Alvin had advised. Stop feeding her nothing but apples (�but that�s all she wants!�), give her the syringed foods several times daily (�but she doesn�t like that! She wants apples!�), put her on a hot water bottle and massage her stomach (�but she doesn�t like that! She doesn�t want to!�) I also had tried to get her to check in with Alvin numerous times, because I felt strongly that her bun was not getting better. Everyday she told me she would call him, and everyday she didn�t.
Folks, if you had a three year old who was desperately ill, would you let them eat nothing but candy and run around the house like a maniac all day? And not bother to call the doctor even though you knew things were going badly? This woman was doing the equivalent with her bunny, and nothing could convince her of that.
So the upshot of this was that the phone call at seven am on my birthday was to tell me that her beautiful bunny was dead.
Sometimes I really hate people. Seriously! I do! I do!!
There have been numerous other wacko awful things I�ve been involved with, but hey, let�s just name one more! Little Pooh had a stroke.
Or maybe it�s e. cunniculi, a rabbit parasite. We aren�t sure.
Yes, I had a totally panic stricken day trying to figure out if my dear little Pooh was headed off to join Miss Bunny in the Great Rabbit Warren In The Sky. Turns out she is fine, though she�s on a heck of a lot of medication. I spent several days watching her like a benevolent, vegetarian hawk.
Of course, it�s always good to have some comic relief while things like this are going on, so one of our hurricane survivors, little Claire, decided to barricade herself in the bathroom.
She somehow got a cabinet door open and wedged against the bathroom door, so it was impossible to get into the bathroom. I could see her through the crack under the door, and she was hopping around, having a great time.
We spent hours trying to get the door open. We then tried to get the bathroom window open. Then we tried some more to get the door open. Then I shoved some endive under the door so she wouldn�t go hungry, because a hungry bunny is a dangerous bunny, especially when, like Claire, they have lots of wheels spinning in their head and none of those wheels are actually spinning in the same direction.
After another hour of trying to get her out, we took a hatchet to the door. It�s ok, I already have a bit of installation art in mind to cover up the hole.
Here she is, the little bugger:
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