Leap of Faith

I did another release of a cottontail into the wild yesterday. I had been caring for the adult male cottontail since January, as he recovered from injuries sustained in an accident with an automobile. Here is a picture of him a couple weeks after I got him:


He came to me very lethargic, in a dazed condition. There was bleeding from behind his right eye, and dried blood in his right ear. I was very concerned that he had suffered a brain injury. I had seen that a couple of weeks before, when another cottontail was brought to me in a similar condition after being struck by a car. That poor little guy just sat in a hunched-up position and would move around and eat very little. I tried to syringe-feed him some food but he just was not interested in eating. I took him to the vet who agreed that there was some severe head trauma but there was nothing we could do for him other than to keep him quiet and comfortable and hope that he will come out of it on his own. Sadly, that was not to be, and I awoke one morning to find him laying on his side. If he was meant to die, I'm glad he could do it in a place where he was warm and safe, and in the presence of someone who cared about him.

This last cottontail rehab had a happier ending, as he got over his injuries and returned to being a normal bunny. As he recovered, he showed he was comfortable with me and would come over to the side of his cage and look me directly in the eye as I talked to him. It was as if he was trying hard to understand me, but I was talking some alien language. Which, of course, was true.

For a wild animal, he adapted very well to living in captivity with a human. I gave him a little wooden house in his cage to hide in, but he enjoyed sitting on top of it so he could watch everything going on in the room. He had a real liking for oatmeal, but for him rabbit pellets were an acquired taste. I tried 4 different kinds of pellets on him until I found one he sort of liked. He also liked grated carrots for a while but in time he decided they weren't really his cup of tea and wasn't as interested in them as he had been.

For the past couple of weeks I had been watching him in his cage and I was slowly coming to the understanding that the life he had with me was not what he was meant to have. Sure, he had everything he needed - food, water, shelter, safety - but he was alone. As he got healthier his instincts started kicking in and he became more wary and frightened of me. I really couldn't take him out and let him play in the playpen as I do the domestic rabbits in my care, because I was afraid he would hurt himself in a more open, unfamiliar environment. I think he could have lived in my home in that cage for a long time, much longer than the life he will have in the wild, surrounded by predators and dangers, but as the old saying goes, a gilded cage is still a cage. I really wanted to keep him, but I had to come to the realization that it's not about what I want, but what is best for him.

I think what really convinced me that he needed his freedom as when I moved him and some other bunnies out of the bunny room in my house to the guest bedroom. His cage had been against a wall opposite the only window in the room. In the guest bedroom, he was atop a bank of cages directly in front of a window, and he spent a huge amount of time on his wooden house staring out the window into my yard. He was clearly very interested in what was going on outside and I couldn't help but think he really wanted to be there. I couldn't deny the feeling that he was trying to tell me something, that he wanted and needed to be outdoors with his own kind, living the life he was meant to have. Sure his life would be fraught with danger every step of the way, and the environment would be harsh and unforgiving. But the cottontails are native to this area and they have the instincts and survival skills to live in this land where death can happen in a split-second. It may sound to humans like a cruel, brutal existence, but to the cottontails, it's what is meant to be for them.

So, on a bright, cool Tuesday morning, I released my cottontail into the underbrush near the home of my friends Kim and Michael in Paradise Valley. This release was pretty much like the others I have done - I took the bunny out of the carrier, said goodbye and put him on the ground. For a couple of minutes, he just sat there and did not move, as if he were overwhelmed by what was happening to him:


Then, as he started to look around and get his bearings, he took what I like to call the "Leap of Faith," his first tentative hop into a world that is both new and familiar at the same time:


As he scampered off into the bushes, I could tell he was very glad to be back in his intended environment. Any misgivings or regrets I might have had about returning him to the wild disappeared at that point, because I knew he was happy:


Then, as I followed him around to a couple of bushes, he stopped and looked at me, and I was able to get one last photo. I like to think he was saying, "Thanks, Dad, for everything!":


If I could say one thing to him, I would say: Thank you, little one, for being in my life for a couple of months and allowing me the great privilege of caring for you. I hope somewhere in the back of your mind you will keep a small memory of me and know that you were loved and had value. Go and enjoy every second of your life, and make hundreds and hundreds of beautiful little cottontail babies who will run and jump and dance in the morning sunlight, just as you did when I set you free.

Sage the Miracle Bunny

Note: In this world of catastrophic oil spills, economic collapse and everyone freaking out over illegal immigration and racial profiling, it often seems that good news is something that happened in the distant past. Occasionally we do come across a story that starts out awful but somehow finds itself a happy ending. This is the true story of Sage, the Miracle Bunny:

Sage is a very handsome, very sweet Mini-Lop rabbit with huge friendly brown eyes that belie the terrible ordeals he has had to endure the past several months. When you pick him and hold him he veritably melts into your arms, and will close his eyes in blissful contentment as you stroke his head. It's so hard to believe how he can surrender himself so completely and trust the touch of a human being after the treatment he has suffered, but one of the most amazing aspects of this wonderful bunny is that he does trust so completely, and so easily.


Where Sage originally came from we have no way of knowing. The only thing we can do is piece together his recent past from anecdotes. A man in the far west Valley had a number of rabbits that he kept in an outdoor hutch. His neighbor noticed that the rabbits were kept in very poor conditions and talked his neighbor into giving him Sage and another bunny. This neighbor also kept the rabbits in some sort of outdoor enclosure, but under marginally better conditions. One night they heard a commotion outside from the rabbit area, and in the darkness they thought they saw a coyote going after the rabbits. The people did not go out to check on the rabbits, claiming to be afraid of the coyote, and when they finally went out to look in the morning, the coyote had bitten off the lower portion of Sage's right front leg. In human terms it would be as if everything past your wrist would be gone. Apparently being too stupid to realize that a little veterinary attention just might be a good thing right then, the care they provided to Sage amounted to taping popsicle sticks to his damaged leg as a sort of splint, and they let him exist that way for three months.

In what would be the first of a series of miracles, Sage's shortened paw healed and did not get infected, despite an inch and a half of visible, exposed bone. The constant pain must have been unimaginable, and I'm sure every step he took was agonizing. One day, a bunny enthusiast from the west Valley was in a grocery store buying vegetables for her rabbits, and she was chatting with the store cashier about bunnies. It just so happened that Sage's owner was standing behind her and overheard their conversation. He started to tell them the story of how he has rabbits and one of them had part of his paw bitten off by a coyote three months ago and how he had hoped the coyote would come back and finish the rabbit off. Needless to say, the bunny person went berserk and talked the man into surrendering Sage to her. She went to his house to get Sage and found another rabbit in the cage with him - a small Holland lop covered with urine stains which we would later name Oscar - so she took both of them. A short time later both bunnies found their way to Brambley Hedge Rabbit Rescue.

All the volunteers at the Rescue were appalled at Sage's gruesome injury and exposed leg bone, so getting him to our veterinarian was a top priority. Our vet intended to save as much of Sage's leg as he could but ended up removing Sage's front paw completely, up to where it meets his torso. After the surgery Sage went into loving foster care and appeared to recover rapidly, seemingly unfazed by his missing front leg.

Then, on a Saturday night, Sage's story would take a very dramatic turn as he suddenly developed a serious problem with his lungs. He started coughing and choking, and red mucus started coming out of his nose. His foster parents rushed him to the emergency clinic, and when they got there he was laying on his side with his lips turning blue. He was most likely minutes away from death at that point. The clinic put him in their "oxygen cage," kind of an oxygen tent for animals, and after a couple of hours Sage started to sit up, look around and groom himself. Once more, amazingly, Sage had cheated death.

After consulting with the veterinarians, our best guess is that Sage suffered a pulmonary embolism, a blood clot in his lungs. These are more often than not fatal, but that was not to be the case for Sage. He went back to foster care and has made an amazing recovery since. He has learned to move around quite well without his leg, and there are YouTube videos here and here of him hopping and frolicking around outside in a grassy yard. Sage loves his daily salads but seems to enjoy being petted and loved most of all. Like any happy, healthy rabbit, he loves to explore but does not have quite the stamina of a regular rabbit. We think his lungs may have diminished capacity due to the embolism, and also moving and hopping around might be more of a strain on him with only three legs. But he knows when he is tired and will stop to take a breather, and when sufficiently rested, will jump up and happily scamper off to take care of more bunny business. Sage went to his first rabbit adoption event recently and was an enormous hit, charming each and every person he met.

Some people think that in our technologically advanced times, the age of miracles is over. When people barely react with more than a slightly-stifled yawn at space shuttle launches or medical breakthroughs, it seems ever easier to overlook the tiny miracles, the little things that happen under our noses each day that are wondrous and uplifting. Every day we have with Sage is one of those little miracles, another opportunity for him to get up and brighten the world with his big heart and sunny disposition, and is an undeniable indication that miracles do, indeed, happen.

When We Lose One...

I am very proud of the work that Brambley Hedge Rabbit Rescue does in the community, saving the lives of innocent rabbits, one bunny at a time. Since 2000 we have adopted close to 1300 rabbits. If it wasn't for the Rescue and all the hard-working, dedicated and loving volunteers I work with, I don't know where those 1300 rabbits would be. I like to think we make a difference for these sweet, gentle creatures and have saved the lives of so many, both literally and figuratively. But sometimes things don't work out so well and we cannot save the life of a bunny. This is the true story of one of them:

The call came to me Saturday afternoon from a shelter in town, they had a rabbit who had been turned in as a stray with a severely broken front leg. Apparently the broken leg bone was visible and poking out of the skin. Their vet staff declined to do anything for the rabbit, and they asked us to take it. I told them we would, but they need to do something now for that rabbit in terms of heading off infection in the wound and giving it a pain reliever. I had seen severely injured rabbits before, in fact one of my bunnies, Nevaeh, came to us with a very similar injury to her back leg. She had surgery and a metal pin was placed in her back leg, and several months later she was as good as new, and to this day shows no ill effects from her ordeal. So it was with a lot of hope that I picked up the unfortunate little bunny and resolved to do whatever it took to help her.

What I found was a beautiful light brown female with gray markings, probably less than a year old. Her fur was clean and soft and she was not skinny or malnourished, undoubtedly she was someone's companion animal until very recently. The leg injury was certainly serious. Her front left paw was broken about halfway up to her body. The lower half of the paw dangled limply, and the broken end of the bone was clearly poking out. The shelter people were charmed by her, and said she was very friendly and easy to handle but I sensed a different situation. I found a rabbit who was so terribly and totally traumatized, she was barely aware of her surroundings. She was easy to handle because she was too injured and traumatized to resist. Her body was limp and her eyes dull and unresponsive. She was alive, but she wasn't there.

I scooped her out of there, got her home and set her up in my injured bunny cage, gave her subcutaneous fluids and put the cage in the living room where I could monitor her constantly. She just laid on the soft towels and padding of the cage and did not move at all. She did not lift her head to look around her new environment, she just stared blankly ahead. I went to her and stroked her little head and spoke as gently as I could. She did not react or acknowledge my presence. I placed water, plenty of food, hay and treats within easy reach of her and she did not move or eat anything. Only after a couple of hours did she move around just a little bit. But she just kept staring ahead with tired, glassy eyes. She was alive, but she wasn't there.

The game plan was to take her to the bunny shelter Sunday morning so she could be transported to the vet's office first thing on Monday. I gently placed her in the carrier for her ride to the Rescue. When I got there, she was laying on her side. She did not look good. We held her as she began to gasp for breath. Erika and I knew she was leaving us and there was little we could do for her. You could tell there was fear in her eyes. She knew her life was coming to an end, and she was afraid. We did everything we could to comfort her and let her know she was with people who loved her. She would not die alone.

I could tell she did not want to live anymore, but she was also afraid to let go. We kept telling her over and over again, it's okay if you have to go, it is okay to leave. It will be all right very soon, there will be no more pain and no more fear. Her gasping breaths eventually became shallower. We held her gently and cradled her little head and stroked her cheeks. Her breaths became shallower and quieter, and soon they stopped. Her eyes relaxed and a look of peace crossed her face. Seconds later, she was still. Her life on earth was over, and her new life at the Rainbow Bridge was beginning.

We tried to make her passage to the next world as quiet as possible. It was very peaceful, there was no struggling or panic or blind, uncontrolled fury, which happens to some rabbits who are not ready to leave this life but are forced to. Her death was gentle and soft, like the morning breezes that swirled around her. She did not die alone, in a cold empty cage or on a garbage-strewn street. She was with Erika and me, and we poured as much love as we could into her, filling her with light and caring, and let her know that her short time was not in vain. She was loved and appreciated, and I hope she knew her life had value.

I don't know what kind of horrific, unbelievable trauma this sweet little creature had to endure, and I never will know. All I know is that it was something so bad and so awful that she could not live with the memory of the experience. Her spirit had already moved on when I picked her up the day before, her body just took a little longer to make the transition. She was with me less than 24 hours but she made a huge impression on me.

She did not have a name when I picked her up and she did not have a name when she died, so I will give her one now. Danika is derived from the Slavic word for "morning star." Like the morning star, visible in the cool blue of dawn, she shined bright, pure and clear before fading into the morning light. Danika's life on earth may have ended harshly, but she moves in beauty and grace now, all sweet silvery light and surrounded by more love than we can imagine.

Time For A Bunny Break!

I admit I've been on a blogging rampage recently. Temperamentally unable to let stupid people skate by unchallanged, I am compelled to take to task idiots who wear their profound lack of intelligence like some bizarro-world badge of honor. My blog posts practically write themselves, what with conservative Republicans - always my target of choice - working harder than ever to serve up gigantic, humongous, festering, steaming piles of stupid, of every stripe and variety. And it never ends! Just today on the news they showed some dried-up, puckered old woman at the "Values Voters" confab who said in all seriousness that she "gets her news from the Fox News Channel because they give you both sides of the issue, and the mainstream media only gives you the liberal view." Stupidity of that magnitude is simply a force of nature, like an earthquake or an F-5 tornado. Awesome and appalling at the same time, you tremble when you see it but still can't get out of its way, like a freight train bearing down on you. Witnessing it is like falling into a toilet. Not only is the actual experience pretty awful, but afterward you feel dirty and disgusting and soiled for a really long time.

So I figured it's time to stop taking cheap shots at the terminally ignorant (for a little while), and wallow in some of the finer things of life - rabbits! There is no better remedy for the corrosive effect that mass stupidity has on your soul than to contemplate the beauty, perfection and sweetness of the rabbit. These, then, are some of the wonderful bunnies who have come into my life recently, some for a short time and others for a bit longer, and have done much to renew my faith that there are some good things in life worth appreciating.

This is Gunnar, a super-sweet little guy whom I captured as a stray in a backyard in south Phoenix. A very nice elderly couple called our Rescue and said they needed help catching a bunny who had been in their yard for the past three weeks. I went to their home with a humane trap and was explaining to them how to set it up, when they mentioned that the bunny is out in their yard right now. I went out to see and spotted this cute little guy hiding under a bush. He allowed me to come up to him and pet him, and as I did I grabbed him. He was very frightened and let out a loud scream, but he soon calmed down and relaxed in my arms. I have him home with me now in foster care and after some initial shyness, he is blossoming and becoming very friendly. He is incredibly beautiful, full of sweetness, and docile. He will make someone a fantastic companion some day.

Minnie is a very interesting and beautiful bunny. She appears to be a breed called Champagne d'Argente, a very old and popular breed in Europe but not very common in the U.S. Her fur coloring and markings are breath-taking, and people cannot stop looking at her and marveling at her. She's had a pretty tough life so far, being innocently and unfairly victimized by a hoarder who kept her and nearly 60 other bunnies in horrible conditions. But as all bunnies seem to have, she has a remarkable capacity to get past her terrible treatment and learn to love and trust again. She is a very exceptional, and exceptionally beautiful girl.

This is Talia, whom I featured in an earlier post on this blog, entitled "Talia's Dance of Joy". Talia came to us with a horrendous, awful and nearly unbelievable infection of her face, due to being bitten by another animal. Her face was so swollen and the pain she experienced must have been horrific. Now, months later, she is an extremely happy, playful and active girl. She loves nothing more than to come out of her cage for some free run time in the house. She absolutely cannot help but jump, spin and dance in the air out of sheer joy.

This is Mr. O'Reilly, a nine-and-a-half year old Holland lop who came to our shelter when his elderly owner passed away. Unneutered, he was the horniest old geezer you've ever seen. Talk about a one-track mind, even at his age. And he most definitely did NOT need any Viagra. In fact he was so unrelentingly, inappropriately horny all the time I began to call him "Senator." He is happily living in foster care with another volunteer, but he is such a memorable, lovable guy, and I hope he lives a very long time.

These are just some of the bunnies I feel so very blessed, honored and privileged to have gotten to know. Their good, pure and beautiful souls are a never-ending source of joy to me. They are truly some of the wonderful things in life that are easy to overlook, but can bring such a wealth of inspiration and love to anyone willing to open their hearts to them.

You can find out more about these lovable buns at the Brambley Hedge Rabbit Rescue website.

This Is Justice?

Disturbing, unhappy news came to light recently in regards to an animal abuse/hoarding situation here in the Phoenix area that has been in litigation for a long time. Involving upwards of 40 or more rabbits and other animals, some evil, deranged individual had kept them in appalling, miserable conditions until the local animal control authority was able to go in, seize the poor animals, and take them to a shelter. While most people would think that would be the end of their suffering and tribulations, sadly it was only the beginning.

The abuser was charged with multiple counts of animal cruelty. The rabbits went to live in small, cramped individual cages at the shelter in a back room of the facility. Because of the charges and the legal wrangling, they had to be sequestered there in "protective custody" and became known as the "PC bunnies." They had no names, only numbers and descriptions. There were many different breeds, but a lot of longhaired angoras and lionheads, and you can imagine what condition their fur would be in after months of little or no grooming. There were also Rexes, Netherland dwarfs, mini-lops and other mixes. Probably at least 30-40 bunnies, who were condemned to this damnable state of legal limbo in July of 2007 and have been there ever since.

The animal shelter was able to talk the abuser into occasionally relinquishing ownership on one or two of the rabbits so they could be put up for adoption and find a real home and family. Brambley Hedge Rabbit Rescue took several of them and found adoptive families right away. But the evil hoarder stubbornly resisted releasing many more of them, in spite of their great adoptability. She and her dirtbag attorneys fought tooth and nail within the legal system to delay and derail all attempts to get any of the rabbits away from her and into a better place.

All this time, nearly two years, the rabbits languished in this back room of the shelter in their tiny cages, unable to run and play outside, with only very cursory and limited human interaction. I don't fault the shelter for this, because of the overwhelming tasks they have caring for enormous numbers of unwanted animals; as far as I'm concerned, the abuser is 100% responsible for creating this horrible, shameful situation, and then doing everything possible to thwart the efforts of those who want nothing more than to give the bunnies a chance at a relatively decent life.

The news came a couple of days ago that the abuser has been declared mentally incompetent to stand trial. This means that all charges against her are being dropped and the rabbits will have to be returned to her. I could not believe this when I heard it. What kind of "justice" system is this when someone who is too mentally impaired to answer for their abuses and cruelties, and yet will have the innocent animals returned to her for even more cruelty?? If she is too incompetent to stand trial, how can she competently care for 40 or more rabbits? This whole situation makes me violently ill, and if the "justice" system in this country wonders why so many people have no respect for them and hold them in the utmost disgust and loathing, the answer is right here.

It was my great privilege to be allowed to visit the "PC bunnies" regularly over the past six or seven months and provide them with much needed grooming and social interaction. A number of rabbits were very fearful and mistrustful of humans, but many of them were absolutely sweet and friendly, and were desperately starved for a kind, soothing voice, a scratch of the ears, and some good combing and brushing. Of course you can't help but fall in love with them. They are utter, total victims in this entire, sad, awful story. What is going to happen to my "PC bunnies?" They were put in a dangerous, unhealthy and cruel situation by the stupidity and evilness of a hoarder, and now an equally evil, uncaring and ignorant legal system is going to put them right back into that situation. There is no way this can be considered "justice," when the critical health and welfare of 40 innocent animals is denied in favor of the "property rights" of a mentally disturbed hoarder who, if there was indeed any "justice" in this life, would be serving a very long sentence in prison.

It is not "justice" by any stretch of the imagination, and the abuser, their legal representatives and everyone associated with the "justice" system deserve to be held in the highest contempt possible. Likewise the legislators of this backward, ignorant state who have enacted laws that treat animals as "things," instead of living, breathing, valued entities. It is my fondest wish that someday, somehow, they will be held accountable for their despicable actions. They all deserve to be locked up in a cage in a back room somewhere and forgotten.

Talia's Dance of Joy

Woke up early this morning and decided to take a couple of bunnies outside for some fresh air and playtime, before this hateful climate kicks in and the temperature screams into triple-digits again. My Flemish Giant girl Peaches always gets to run free in the yard; she needs the exercise but rarely gets it, preferring as she does to park her ample tushie under a bougainvillea bush and contemplate her plans for world domination. I have an exercise pen on the back patio and I like to bring another of the bunnies outside for a little fun-time. This morning it was Talia's turn.
Talia is an incredibly sweet little agouti-brown girl, about 6-8 months old with a huge fluffy white-on-the-bottom tail and completely adorable helicopter ears. When she came to the rabbit rescue about a month ago I could barely believe what I saw. Apparently she had been bitten in the face by another animal and the wound had gotten horrendously infected. The whole left side of her face was swollen and misshapen, and there was so much pus in her face it was starting to leak upwards through her tear duct and out her eye. I had never seen an infection so bad and out of control. I took pictures of her when she first came to me but I hesitate to publish one in this blog because they are so hard to look at. Trust me when I tell you she looked truly awful and I can't imagine the pain and discomfort she had to live with for God knows how long.

Talia ended up staying at the animal hospital for over three weeks, as they did several surgeries on her to reconstruct her eyelids and clean out all the infection and prurient material. Finally she was released and came back to our rescue, and I went up earlier this week to scoop her up and bring her to my home for some much-deserved spoiling and TLC. Miraculously, she has not lost vision in her left eye.

Despite all she has gone through Talia is still an extremely happy, trusting bunny. As I sat on my patio enjoying the (temporary) coolness of the morning, Talia could not contain herself and started a very extended performance of the Rabbit Dance of Joy, or "binky" as it is known technically. She scampered and frolicked around her exercise pen, running in and out and around the cut-out cardboard box I put in there. There was a lot of happy jumping, spinning in the air and kicking-up of heels. She stood up high on her back legs, telescoping her body as much as possible to sniff the spring breezes and see as far as she could. After nearly an hour of that she calmed down just a little bit and spent time diligently examining the inside of her cardboard shelter. Just now she flopped down on the bottom of the pen, kicking her back legs fully out behind her. But after a minute or two she will jump up again and start her happy dancing anew, punctuating each move with a sideways hop and a sassy shake of her floppy ears.

Seeing her in such a state of unbridled joy brings me a great deal of happiness and satisfaction. Knowing how she looked when she came to us and seeing her now so full of joy and life, it makes me eternally grateful for groups like Brambley Hedge Rabbit Rescue whose mission it is to take severely mistreated rabbits such as Talia and literally give them a second chance at life. I don't know what her final veterinarian bill will be, but I'm sure it will be staggering. Without the care she received through BHRR, it is very doubtful she would be alive right now. That BHRR will spend that kind of money to give an innocent little creature another chance to run, jump, spin and dance again is to me one of the miracles of existence that make life worthwhile.

I'm not going off on a rant again about how stupid, evil, loathsome and detestable human beings are, especially the ones that put Talia in such an horrible situation and then dumped her off at the animal shelter with a terse "We don't want her anymore!" and a $3 donation. If I had a dollar for every time I wanted to go postal on some ignorant human being for being a cruel, swinish dirtbag I would be typing this blog from my villa on the Cote d'Azur and Stevie Nicks would be serving me cocktails with little paper parasols in them. I just hope that karma comes down on those people with the weight of a thousand blazing suns, and they have to experience the pain of being discarded like a piece of trash, which is actually better than they deserve. Talia will always have some physical scars from her ordeal; if she has any mental scars, I can't tell what they are. Rabbits can be so incredibly, unbelievably resilient in the wake of horrific, heartless cruelty and ignorance. If only humans could be one-tenth as noble.

As for me, I'm just going to watch Talia dance and hop and binky in the morning breeze, and think of happier things.

It Happened Again

Yesterday I went to a local animal shelter to pick up a rabbit to bring into the rescue with which I volunteer, Brambley Hedge Rabbit Rescue. Most of the bunnies we have at our rescue come from this shelter, one of the largest in the Phoenix area and not affiliated with any governmental agency. Bunnies that they cannot keep because of health, behavioral or other issues (such as being too small to spay/neuter, which was the case with yesterday's bunny) and are deemed unadoptable (and therefore eligible for euthanasia) come to BHRR, literally for a second chance at life. The bunny I picked up and took away was a beautiful little black Satin mix, a tiny little girl under three pounds in weight. She is very healthy, friendly and curious and will make someone a wonderful companion. I suspect she may be the first of the Easter 2009 bunnies to come in, with I'm sure many more to follow.

To pick up the bunnies I must go in through their admissions area, where people surrender their animals to the shelter. It is an awful place, the air thick with sadness and broken promises, and I try my best to insulate myself from the overwhelmingly tragic atmosphere. I don't know how the employees work there but I'm starting to think that, out of necessity, they have a very highly developed capacity for ignoring everything and everyone around them and just focusing on the task they are doing at that moment, to the exclusion of all else. I used to think they were just incredibly rude but now I realize it is a defense mechanism, something that they need to protect themselves from the nearly-limitless cruelty and stupidity of the general public.

It is extremely sad to watch an animal being turned in, but sometimes I see something that deeply affects me. Yesterday a man was turning in his large, Dalmatian-mix dog. The dog sat in front of his owner, licking the man's hand and his knee as he filled out the paperwork to give his dog over to the shelter. There was a look of such love and trust on this dog's face - he had no idea of the nightmarish situation into which his owner is going to dump him. The sweet dog was completely unaware that he is going to be suddenly and permanently removed from the home he undoubtedly loved and thrust into a system of cold, empty cages, no playtime or recreation, crummy generic food and worst of all no family. Maybe his family had children that loved him and petted him and played with him every day. Maybe he just lived for the time he spent with his family each day, when he felt loved and secure and wanted. All that is over now, his whole world will change in the most drastic fashion imaginable, and his life will never be the same. I can't help wondering if somehow he blames himself for his family abandoning him. Maybe he thinks, I'm a good dog, I know I am. Why did this happen to me? I hope my family finds me and takes me back home, I'm not sure what is going on. And when they never show up for him, will he feel despair?

Maybe something good will happen to him. Maybe another family will come around and notice him and see what a good dog he is, and take him home to another family and another life, this time for good. Yeah, maybe that will happen. I know that the animal shelter does the best they can with an overwhelming, never-ending flood of unwanted, unloved animals. They try to care for the animals and give them their very small slice of love and attention amidst a huge, ever-increasing number of needy, deserving animals who come to them through no fault of their own.

But all I saw was a dog who had no idea what was going to happen to him, but still showed love and trust to his owner to the very last second. And that ripped my heart out and destroyed me for that day.

Disappointing Choice

President Obama deliberately passed up a chance to really do a lot of good for animal shelters all over the country by choosing to get the First Dog from a breeder instead of a rescue organization.

Sure, the family has the ultimate right to get their pet from whatever source they decide on, but it seems to me Malia and Sasha probably wouldn't care much where their dog came from - they just want a pet! I really don't think that the Obamas ever had any serious intention to get a shelter dog. Their first choice always had been a breeder, in spite of the very real tragedy of millions of perfectly wonderful dogs, cats, rabbits and all other domestic animals languishing in shelters everywhere, unwanted and unloved. The fact that they and their P.R. flunkies are now equivocating about getting their dog from a "home where he didn't work out" instead of a "breeder" indicates that they are aware of a public-relations backlash and realize their unpopular, indefensible decision. The fact that the dog was a gift from Senator Edward Kennedy does not cover up the fact that it came from a breeder.

I realize that being President is the most difficult job in the world because anything you do is guaranteed to piss off someone, and there are many more pressing issues that command his attention. But it would have been such a great boost to the thousands of organizations across this country, whose members labor tirelessly and often without compensation amid depressing, demoralizing conditions, to have a shelter animal in one of the most visible platforms in the entire world. Maybe people would have thought, "if a rescue dog is good enough for the White House, they're good enough for me."

A shelter animal in the White House would have been a great thing. The Obama girls would have gotten a fantastic pet and it would have been a potent reminder to everyone seeking a companion animal that adopting from a shelter is saving a life, and creating space for another life to be saved.

Obama chose not to exercise moral leadership and do the decent thing, and because of that he gets a great big FAIL!!! We expected better from him.

Two Boxes of Bunnies

I went to the local animal shelter this past Monday, to pick up a bunny to bring into the rescue agency with which I volunteer, Brambley Hedge Rabbit Rescue. BHRR is a non-profit organization which rescues, shelters, rehabilitates and finds homes for unwanted domestic rabbits. I have been a volunteer since January 2001 and my affiliation with them continues to be one of the best experiences of my entire life. We get the majority of our shelter bunnies from other agencies, where owners surrender them and we take the ones which may not be immediately adoptable and require some additional care. The rabbit I picked up that day is a white bunny with long hair, that was labeled as difficult to handle and cage protective. I picked it up and was able to carry it around with no problem. I think he will be okay.

However when I was picking that bunny up, two women were there filling out paperwork for surrendering some rabbits. I overheard one of them say that they just found a couple of boxes of rabbits on their property. Really? That has never happened to me. One of the shelter workers walked by with a large, beat-up looking cardboard box and I was able to look inside. More than a dozen young rabbits, all sizes and colors, were just piled on top of one another, looking around in fear and confusion. They bumped and jostled into each other, struggling to maintain balance and get air. I learned later that there was one small rabbit on the bottom of the pile that was overheated from the car ride and crushed from the weight of the other rabbits on top of him, and was near death. Luckily he survived.

I've been in animal rescue long enough to have a clear understanding of the level of evil in this world, and the capacity of humans to inflict misery and cruelty on innocent and defenseless animals seems limitless. What kind of vile, twisted excuse for a person first of all allows the uncontrolled breeding of rabbits, and then when the problem gets to be too much for their walnut-sized brains to deal with, they merely package their problem up in a box like so much trash, dump it on someone else's doorstep and then walk away with complete impunity. Where is the justice in the world when people can commit acts of such swinish ignorance (apologies to the swine of the world) and are not required to take any responsibility for their stupidity?

Two boxes of bunnies. 30 rabbits. 30 beautiful little faces. 60 wide, trusting eyes. 60 ears which swivel to hear any sound. 30 wiggling noses and 30 cottonball-tails. 30 innocent lives brought into this world by some moron too stupid to be even dimly aware of the consequences of their actions. 30 innocent lives thrown into an already overworked, stretched-beyond-capacity system. 30 very uncertain futures. Still, organizations like BHRR continue to do everything they can to help stem the tide of grotesque ignorance and inhumanity which seems to get worse all the time. Sometimes I get so discouraged. Until I realize we are there to help in any way we can.

The bunnies need us.