Bunny
On Saturday, I was gearing up to do some house-cleaning when Twig showed up. She had left her stuff at my place earlier, so I figured she was back for it, but she called up the stairs, "Could you come help me?"
I went down and found her holding her cashmere sweater, in which was nestled a baby bunny. The bunny was bleeding all over her sweater. She had nearly hit it out on the road, then had pulled over and braved the traffic on foot to rescue it as it frantically tried to find shelter under various moving vehicles.
So we found a vet who was open on Saturday--Dr. Bhakhri, at the El-C Veterinary Clinic in Sunnyvale--and took the bunny in for help, though we weren't sure whether it was already beyond help. But it turned out the bunny was more or less okay, except for a badly broken hind leg, and a small head injury that the doctor stitched up. So the doctor wrapped up the leg, and Twig took Bunny home to try to nurse him back to health.
I'll let her tell the rest of the story, but the sad ending is that Bunny died this morning. :(
I have a few bunny photos, taken after we returned from the vet and before Twig went home. I didn't want to scare him with the flash, so they're kind of blurry. But you can at least get a sense of how small and furry he was. He was cuter and less scary-looking (and less angry-looking) than some of these photos might suggest.
We suspect he was one of the kits of the two domesticated-looking adult rabbits that wander through my neighborhood, often dining on the front lawn, but of course there's no way to know.
Alas, poor Bunny. But I'm pretty sure that dying quietly in a warm dark place, lightly drugged, is preferable to being run over by a car. Twig did good.
We liked the vet quite a bit; he was friendly and sensible and informative (although it turns out he didn't tell us as much about the care and feeding of young rabbits as would have been ideal--the clinic specializes in dogs and cats, I think), and when Bunny seemed likely to leap from the examination table, Dr. Bhakhri matter-of-factly shifted the examination to the floor of the room. So if you're looking for a vet in Sunnyvale, especially for a cat or dog, you might look up the El-C clinic; good people.
It turns out that feeding orphaned baby rabbits is a tricky business at best: "Bottle-feeding infant rabbits usually culminates in the babies' death within a few days to weeks." So if you find a rabbit nest, be sure to read the orphaned baby bunnies FAQ--among other things, a nest that looks abandoned may not really be. But in this case, I don't think there was anything better we could've done; there was no way to find the nest or to be sure that my occasional adult-rabbit visitors were the parents. Also, a bunch of cats live around here, so just leaving broken-legged Bunny to find his way back to his parents alone might've been disastrous.
But it's still sad. Bunny was doing well yesterday, so we got our hopes up that he would be okay. We were looking forward to sending photos to Cute Overload once his stitches healed.
Anyway, if you feel like stopping by Twig's LJ entry with condolences, please do.
