Pet of the Week
July 26, 2010: Guillermo
“He was just returned. The shelter is full, and I don’t have room for any more rescues at my house right now. I was hoping you could just give him a place to stay until I can make other arrangements for him”.
I put the black and white lop eared rabbit in an exercise pen in the kitchen. Guillermo (way too long for a bunny name, I call him G) was adopted from a Dayton Area Rabbit Network foster home less than six months earlier. He’d been returned because “it just didn’t work out with the kids”. Translation: “The kids were not taking care of him so rather than do the responsible thing and take care of him ourselves, we are teaching the kids that pets are disposable: you don’t feel like taking care of them, you just get rid of them”. At least they were responsible enough to return him to us instead of dumping him on the street somewhere.
G wasn’t eating, he was lethargic and depressed; apparently he hadn’t eaten all day. Going from his home of several months to the shelter, then to Steve’s house, then to my house within a day had been too stressful. Within minutes I had the equivalent of a Las Vegas bunny buffet set up in his pen to tempt him; all my gardening is bunny directed, so he had a wide variety of bunny herbs and vegetables to choose from. Nada. “I spit upon your greens” he seemed to say. I got out an assortment of fruits, and then began dragging out bunny treats. G wasn’t having any of it; he sat in the corner with his head down.
A rabbit that does not eat for 24 hours is a veterinary emergency; their digestive system can shut down and they can die. After some tummy medicine, tummy rubs, prayer, and a couple of hours of lost sleep on my part, I was relieved when he began eating hay. He refused to eat anything else however; the rest of my bunny herd happily ate the untouched buffet leftovers. As it was well after midnight, I turned on the nightlight for him and G seemed to start to relax…until my tree frog suddenly started hollering about the crickets in the terrarium!
The next day, feeling better, G began growling and charging at me anytime I was in his exercise pen, or even when I put my hand in the pen to give him food or water. Bunnies can be territorial, and this is probably his way of saying he is tired of the constant road trips and wants to stay put. G never attempted to bite, but the bunny equivalent of leaping out from behind a bush yelling “Bugga bugga boo!” works every time – I never expect it, and it startles the daylights out of me.
I called Steve (his former foster parent) who said G never did this prior to being adopted. I mentioned that G also picks his xpen up with his teeth and then drops it, making a great deal of noise. “Oh that he did. All the time. He likes picking things up – his exercise pen, gratings, and covers to the ventilation shafts. We told you he got into our ventilation shafts, right? I had to tear out the wall to get him out of there. He was fine.”
Over the next few days, G became more comfortable, flopping down and rolling on his back like a dog. I tickled his face with a carrot top, and, irritated, he nipped at it and discovered he liked carrot tops. He has begun to eat a few leaves of spinach, some rabbit chow and a tiny bit of apple in addition to his hay. He now enjoys being brought out to the living room in his pen, where he can see the other bunnies. He continues to growl and charge at us.
One day as I spoke to him, he looked right at me, picked up his water bowl with his teeth, and – still looking at me – turned it upside down, dumping water all over the carpet. When my daughter brought a rag to clean it up, he growled and charged at her. This, I thought, is just the sort of behavior that led Steve to make up that ridiculous story about not having room for another bunny. Puh-leese. I have been to his house and there is not one single bunny currently living in his ventilation system.
Steve can be so selfish sometimes.
I anticipate that G will continue to become happier and more relaxed here, and that as this occurs, his growling and charging behavior will cease. In the meantime, he is definitely keeping us on our toes!
~Phyllis O’Beollain
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