Last night, I had a rabbit nightmare - or what I wish was just something terrible fabricated in my mind.
See, I am not a big fan of rabbits despite owning two and being on a forum for them. It's not that I don't feel they deserve the utmost humane consideration, and I would certainly go out of my way to help one. I regularly rear orphaned litters despite the expense and heartache, and have been trying VERY hard to do better by my own rabbits. Yet regardless, I have a general unfondness of rabbits, and after thinking long about it, I think I know why.
You've heard me mention that Brindam came from a hoarder's barn. What you may not know was that before I turned the barn's owner in to humane authorities, I spend almost eight years volunteering at her barn. The barn was a not-for-profit educational barn (not a rescue) when it started, but spiraled out of control due to the owner's hoarding problems. From about age eight until age 16 or so, I volunteered at this barn with my mom. When we started, it was a fairly nice place. By the time we left, it was pure hell.
I think back and the rabbits suffered the most of any creature there. I remember finding dead rabbits every day, usually babies, due to disease, fighting, and hunger. Some escaped feral only for us to find their coyote-mangled caracasses strewn across the fields. I had to contend with animals with ammonia scald, maggot infestations, eye and ear infections, overgrown teeth, serious fight injuries and abcesses, etc. all while a very young child.
I think the worst was when a one winged crow living there escaped and got into the rabbits' nest boxes. I spent over an hour cleaning up pieces of baby rabbits; tiny paws and ears. The worst was finding half of a face in a water bowl. This happened when I wasn't even a teenager, but over ten years later it is burned in my mind still.
I thought of these rabbits after a nightmare called back to my memory so many of their sweet faces and pain wracked bodies. I thought of my own poorly cared for early childhood rabbits, the ones my parents left neglected in small cages or even gave away when they became inconvenient. I thought of the terrible experience with the fraudulent rescue, of those two babies that died screeching and bleeding in my hands. I thought of wildlife patients with horrific injuries from cats, lawnmowers. I thought of my terrified drive to a vet's office, one of my first driving experiences, transporting a dying sanctuary rabbit through back roads in upstate New York and wondering if it would have lived had someone more experienced driven.
I realized that the reason why I generally avoid working with rabbits, why I "don't like" them, is that rabbitsrepresent immense suffering to me. I associate them with some of the most painful memories in my early life, because at heart I
do care about them and
do love them.
When my dreams awoke me, I laid on the couch snuggling Thanator, thinking him the start of a change in how I feel about rabbits. He came from the worst possible situation - abandoned and in the jaws of a dog - and now has a wonderful loving home.
I need to close the chapters of my past and start writing a new story about my life with rabbits. This, in my mind, makes it all the more important that I do the best I can by my current rabbits. Why I must help rabbits whenever I am able. I can see Wendy and Brindam through the window of the computer room, stretched out lounging in the early morning sun. I think we're off to a good start.
