Daigo Momma: July 2009

Long story short I work in a vet clinic and we do wildlife rehabilitation. On Wednesday someone brought us two baby orphaned rabbits. I usually don't participate in wildlife mainly because I'm sure I will kill it or my son will kill it or my dogs or my cat....you get the picture. However, I decided to take them on and nurse them until they could be released. In my defense baby rabbits are suppose to be very hard to keep alive.

Wednesday night and Thursday they did great. I had a heating pad on them to keep warm which I thought got too hot so I stopped use and I also syringe feed them about four times a day. I kept them in a small soft side cooler with some towels and zipped it up most of the way. I sat the cooler on my kitchen counter so none of my animals could get them.

Early Friday morning my husband got home from work around 3am and woke me up because one of the rabbits were missing. So we each took a flashlight and played CSI for a while looking all over the house. I did think my pets could have gotten him but very unlikely considering the cat was outside and the dogs never left my room that I knew of while I was sleeping and I usually wake up to them jumping off the bed. After twenty minutes of searching we gave up. I made myself a glass of water and as I watched the water flow down my sink I thought, "Oh shit! He might be in garbage disposal." I reached down there and felt fur, then immediately screamed. Mostly because I wouldn't remember the last time I used the garbage disposal and was unsure if the rabbit was in one piece. My husband got him out for me. Other than being wet he was fine. The rabbits spent the rest of the night in their soft side cooler in a big deep tub so they could not exscape.

Friday morning I was leaving a two day vacation and going with a Vet so I decided to just take them with me. They did very well the rest of the day Friday and most of Saturday. We checked on them Saturday afternoon around five and they were both hopping around. We even took their picture with a MyJones Soda so we could enter it in their label contest.

Saturday night we went to a wedding on the beach then out to eat came back and they rabbits were barely alive. Both on their side freezing cold. I left the their heat source back home because they hadn't needed it. I still dunno if they got cold and that caused all this or if getting ill caused their temperature to drop. So anyways I decide to warm up a small towel in the microwave. BTW I have done this before without this effect. It may have been in there 30 seconds tops and we start to smell it. The girl I went with grabbed the towel out of the microwave and threw it out the door. Let me back up a minute.....when we arrived at our hotel that night there were a bunch of nasty creepy guys sitting outside smoking and drinking so when she threw the towel outside she barely opened the door because we didn't want to have to interact with them. Also we were both sure the towel was NOT on fire. It just looked like we had left the iron on it. We had to warm these guys up and fast. So I started ironing hand towels. As soon as I ironed one I would wrap them in it the start ironing the other and switch out. I did this for about thirty minutes until they were warm enough to leave to go pick up a heating pad.

Here it is about 1am and we are booking it to Walmart the closest thing open b/c they don't have Walgreens on every corner there) in our PJs to get a heating pad. We finally get one get it home and one rabbit is sitting up looking real good the other one still looks bad. I put the heating pad in the cooler with a towel over it and left them there while we slept. ****Also, side note, does anyone know where to get a heating pad that doesn't have auto shut off?**** Woke up four hours later to get ready to leave and they both had died.
Yes sad ending but still a comedy!