Thursday, April 19, 2007

Wool! It's wool!! (and an update from the Bunny Palace)

Well, okay. It will be wool. At my house. Real wool that has only been sheared and skirted, not fussed with. This will be the first time I've gotten to play with more than a sample sized bit of unprocessed wool. I won an auction for a pound of white Cotswold and a pound of gray 7/8 Cotswold and I'm so excited. Now. here's hoping I haven't overextended my good karma thing and find out that the wool isn't as nice as I hope.

On the karma front... Friday we took in a bunny from the shelter. For the first time, I am actually quite seriously glad that I don't have the address or name of the so-called human that surrendered this rabbit. He is supposedly 6 years old and was surrendered in a feces encrusted, wire bottom, tiny cage. We knew from the outset that he had horrible sore hocks on both back feet and one extremely large testicle. We initially thought the testicle might really be a hernia (apparently common in dogs, not sure how common in rabbits), but a trip to the vet for a quick check made us think it was more likely a tumor so we scheduled the next available surgery, which was today. Saturday night while I was putting antibiotic ointment on
his back feet, I took a good look at the rest of him and noticed that the poor bunny actually has something that I have never seen before - sore hocks on his *front* feet.

He's such a sweet bunny and he seems to love human companionship that DP and I have both been hoping and praying that he would make it through today's surgery and we wouldn't find that the tumor was cancer and had spread. Okay, that sounds weird. We'd hope that anyway, but this bunny has had it so bad that we want him to have more than one week of good before he goes to the Bridge. Somebody, or somebunny, was listening and the tumor was completely contained and is now in a jar decorating a shelf at the vet's office. It's gross. She loves it. Our vet is definitely in the right field.

We did however discover, when the vet did an x-ray to try to determine if there was anything else going on, that at some point in the past, he had a badly broken leg that was just allowed to heal as it chose. His left back femur is about 40-50% shorter than his right back femur. I tell you, there had better be an extra special place in the afterlife for people who let this happen to people or animals.

The worst, in my mind, is that his injuries aren't from active abuse. They are from neglect. Abuse I can at least sort of understand as it often goes with mental illness of some kind. That doesn't mean I like it, just that I can understand it. What I can't understand is how anyone can allow another living being to live in such absolute filth, much less with a clear medical issue, and not feel the need to do something, even if only to euthanize. They had to have known when he broke his leg. With a back leg like that it would as obvious as if a human broke their femur.

So, anyway, Lance (the bunny - after Lance Armstrong, fellow testicular cancer survivor) being healthy enough to survive surgery and all may well have used up any good karma that is hanging out in my "plus" column. Here's hoping not. :-) I want to have fun with my wool.

1 comment:

Amy Lane said...

Definitely good karma out to the bunny...they really are sweet natured critters...kudos for you and DP for taking them on!