Actually, I guess I should say what I know about one rabbit in particular, the one we live with.

We have a rabbit.
No, wait…..a rabbit has US.

He’s lived with us for over two years now.
We didn’t want another pet, in fact we made a promise-deal, no more pets. We even shook on it.

We’ve had dogs since our beginning. We thought it might be fun to experience the freedom to come and go without the responsibility and worry of a pet. However, had we ever decided that we wanted another pet, I promise you that our thoughts would never have drifted to a rabbit…..NEVER!

We found him in our back yard….. a three pound, soft baby bunny munching on our clover. (If you follow my blogs, you’ve probably read my previous two stories about him, the first being RITA RABBIT and the follow-up RABBIT ON THE RUN. They’re stories about how his life with us began.)

How he got into our yard and why out of all the yards in the area, he hopped into ours, is right up there with what really happened to JFK.

Rabbit’s first name was Rita. Then we found out that Rita was a boy so my girls renamed him Stuart Little. After a little while of watching his funny antics in the house, we renamed him “Monkey,” and that’s his legal rabbit name on his veterinarian chart, but we call him Rabbit.

We have turkeys, lots of wild turkeys. They stroll through our cul-de-sac often. We get a kick out of watching the fuzzy babies trying to run, waddling from side to side with their short little legs to keep up behind their mama’s. They grow quickly and when the turkey teen years hit, like all teens they hang out. They walk up and down the street together in groups of 10 or 12, no longer needing the guidance of their moms, getting ready for adult turkeyhood. (I can’t help but visualize them all wearing black leather jackets.)

Before long, these now young adults return with feathers out in full display strutting through the neighborhood obviously trying to seduce the girl turkeys.

And then, in no time, here they come, the seduced girl turkeys with their fuzzy little babies waddling behind them and it starts all over. They’re fun to watch.

But we’ve never seen a rabbit anywhere near here. So this little ball of fur munching on our clover and unaffected when I picked him up was a novelty. Picking him up was the first mistake. (I’m NEVER, EVER going to pick up a turkey!)

Time passed and we reluctantly realized that the little hopper was now a member of our household, making us a family of three.
Lobo (my husband), and I began spending our mornings sitting side by side, computers clicking, finding everything we could read about bunnies.

Before long we were experts.

We were happy to learn they can be left alone for 2-3 days as long as they have all the needed Timothy Hay, water and litter box. OK, that didn’t sound too bad.

We’d been planning a trip to Arizona.
Julie and Melissa, our daughters, agreed to stop by and check in on the bunny every day.

Shortly after we left, little bunny stopped eating, drinking and pooping. My girls didn’t think much of it, didn’t realize that’s not a good thing with rabbits. But now being rabbit experts, we knew it was dangerous.

When we arrived home from Arizona, our little bunny didn’t look very well.

The next day was Memorial Day. It’s hard enough to find a vet for a rabbit on a day that isn’t a holiday, but WHO’s open to treat a rabbit on Memorial Day? I’ll tell you who…..almost NOBODY! We called every vet in the area and beside the fact that they were closed, they didn’t care for “exotic pets.” Like the one that had hopped right into our backyard. Exotic? That’s NOT what I call him.

The recording at our bunny’s regular vet sent us to an animal hospital which was only open nights, week-ends and holidays when every other animal care facility is closed. We called and yes, they care for rabbits in distress. Within minutes we had our little guy into his carrying case and were headed to the Folsom Emergency Animal Vet Clinic.

It was 2021, in the year of COVID. They wouldn’t let us go in with him. It was all done by phone.

A tech came to the car and we handed over the goods; one not-feeling-so-good “exotic pet” in his little carrying case.

They kept in touch with us by cell phone. We sat in the parking lot in our car and and waited the 2 hours while he was being treated. The tech had explained that Rabbit was going to need IV fluids and enemas to wake up his GI System. He had something called GI Stasis which is deadly to rabbits.

We passed the time listening to music referred to as oldies. (We refer to it as the best music EVER.) Had we not been so stressed and the morning air a bit nippy, we would have gone out on that parking lot and danced.
We remembered, laughed and shared fun memories that each song brought back while we waited.

When they finally returned Rabbit to us, they thought he’d pull through. We were given a dried food supplement and syringes plus stomach medication with instructions in case it happened again. They were an excellent team of animal caregivers by the way.

The very next morning we were at our regular vet with little bunny in our arms. They kept him all day. They don’t keep rabbits overnight so for the next 5 days, every morning we brought little bunny to the vet and picked him up and brought him home every evening. They gave him IV fluids and rabbit enemas throughout the day. (Ever hear of such a thing? Me neither.) They were trying to get his G.I. system working again. Poor little bunny, he didn’t look well.

It took a few days but finally he began to eat, drink, poop and hop around.

So, for a week of Rabbit IV’s and enemas and a mere $1,600.00 vet bill, this little rabbit that we didn’t even invite into our backyard or life, was going to recover, and we were thrilled.

Not long after we had returned from Arizona, we were faced with a nasty Chicago emergency and we needed to be there.
My girls reluctantly agreed to again care for the bunny.

It was early June and we found ourselves in the basement of our friend’s home in Chicago, waiting for the all clear sign on the TV. It was the second time that day we’d headed for the basement when the tornado sirens began blaring. Running for shelter was one of the things I didn’t miss when I moved to California. But here we were taking shelter.

While we were in the basement, my cell phone rang the strange sound alerting me that it was Julie.

Both of my girls were on the phone. Rabbit wasn’t eating, drinking or pooping and he didn’t look good. No. Please. Not this again.

The rabbit first aid kit was down the hallway and on the counter. I talked them through how to mix up the concoction to put in the syringe and get it into his mouth, down his throat and into his GI system.
My girls love that rabbit and certainly didn’t want anything to happen to him (especially on their watch). Still, they’re a couple of goof-balls and listening to them later describe what they’d gone through was close to hysterical.

They wrapped him tight in his blankie like a burrito. Melissa held him and Julie force fed him with the syringe. I wish I could have recorded that.
They took turns camping out all night, lying on the floor next to his apartment.
They called me numerous times a day to report. They put me on speaker phone and insisted that I talk to him so yes, every day I talked to a rabbit on the phone. I felt guilty for putting them through this and sad for that little bunny. I wanted to be home…..six days later, we were.

My girls had done a great job getting Rabbit through his crisis, however, they stood firm together to tell us NO MAS. There would be no more rabbit sitting by them. They said it was too sad watching him become lonely for us and too stressful trying to keep him alive ’til we returned. They strongly suggested that we learn to TRAVEL WITH A RABBIT.

As for Rabbit, the moment he heard our voices and saw us, he came back to life, hopping in happy circles. A rabbit! Tell me they don’t have feelings…..or brains.

We’re Pacific Ocean people. We’ve traveled that coast, vacationed on that coast and lived on that coast over the entire amount of years that we’ve been together (which feels like forever).

We no longer live on the California coast but the ocean is close, a 3-hour drive to the Monterey Peninsula and half that long if we want a day trip into San Francisco.

COVID threw us off. Our every 3 month ocean visits were risky. Huge amounts of people were dying. During that time, we rented isolated houses on the northern coast and stayed clear of others.

But now?
Now what were we gonna do?

The only positive thought that came from losing our two furry pals, Mr Lincoln and Sweet LooLoo, had been the freedom to come and go which we were planning on enjoying, but now? A rabbit! We were going to be held hostage by a rabbit? Our freedom to come and go…..gone?

The problem wasn’t what to do with him while we were gone. The problem was when we left him, he got emotional, wouldn’t eat and then got expensively ill. And our two rabbit sitters had quit.

Now, go ahead and think your thougths, we’ve thought them all but we’re animal lovers. We could fall in love with a grasshopper, so doing what you might be thinking isn’t easy. Yes, there’s places to take him where he’d be put in a cage that he could barely turn around in. We thought of everything and nothing worked fur us other than, as our girls had suggested, learn to travel with a rabbit.

We’ve been reading about rabbits for 2 years. Rabbits have hearts, they love. They have brains, they think, they remember, they don’t forget. They have feelings, they hold grudges.
They become familiar with our our words and they put meaning to them. They have a cat-like personality. You don’t tell them what to do. They hear you. They know what you want and they’ll do it when they’re ready. And they have fear. They’re prey and their fear is built in and never goes away.

We didn’t talk about it for a while. We were both just thinking, trying to figure out what to do, come up with a great idea, but there weren’t any. A great idea never came.

Eventually we came to the same conclusion…..Rabbit had to come with us. NOT an exciting thought to either of us but if we wanted to get back to the coast now and then, we were going with a rabbit.

But, how?

We did more rabbit reading. We couldn’t just let him loose in the car like a dog. He’s a rabbit, he’d chew the seats, the luggage and everything else in sight.
He needed to be confined in a comfy traveling something. We thought about the pet carrier thing that we put him in to go to the vet but no, that was too small for a 3 hour trip. We didn’t have the heart to do that.
We came up with the idea of a car cage. It worked. It fit fine in the back of the SUV and was big enough for his litter box, his food and water bowls, his blankie, a couple of toys and room to stretch long and lie down, oh, and of course, it was carpeted. This rabbit likes his places with carpeting.

Our maiden voyage went OK. Rabbit was afraid and he tremored a bit and we could tell by his scrunched up face that he wasn’t happy, but we made it. We stopped twice along the way to encourage him to drink some water which, as we figured, he refused. We held him and promised there was an ending to this. I don’t think he believed us. His face remained in a mad scrunch.

We chose the motel at our destination because they allowed pets and the rooms were comfortable and big. Big enough to build a temporary rabbit dwelling.

First we unloaded the folded squares of fencing we’d packed and set them up under the window where there was plenty of room. The fencing was placed on top of a carpet remnant we’d brought along. If Rabbit was mad and decided to chew, we wanted it to be the remnant from home, not the motel carpet. Checking out of a motel with a rabbit eaten hole in the carpet is nothing we wanted to deal with.

I brought him inside in my arms. He was cautiously interested in our surroundings. Rabbits, or at least this rabbit, are very nosy. I took him to his temporary, pre-fab, fenced-in home. He hopped in and inspected the inside, outside and every side. When he was satisfied that he’d seen everything, he hopped over to a back corner and hunched up in a big crabby, fur-ball pose for us with a scrowled, wrinked (but adorable), pissed-off rabbit furry face.

His home away from home was near the head of my side of the bed.

A loud thump woke me up the first night. I wasn’t sure I was hearing what I thought I was hearing so I didn’t move. And then there were two loud thumps. That little ass rabbit was thumping at me in the middle of the night. I reached for my cell phone and pushed on the flashlight. He was as close to me as he could get and he looked scared. He thumped again. I slipped out of bed (as they say in stories) and quietly opened his door. He hopped a couple hops to get to me. I picked him up and held him in the chair for a good hour. I whispered a few rabbit stories. And what a great listener he is, he never moved and for the rest of our ocean stay, Rabbit was fine.

He wasn’t near as afraid returning home from the coast. Didn’t shake. Even spread out and took a long nap.

We were glad to be home but nothing like the happiness of a rabbit realizing that he was back in his familiar surroundings. He raced through the house hopping and doing what’s called rabbit binkies until he wore himself out.

Traveling with a rabbit has put a damper on how many times we’ve gone to the coast in the past couple of years. We can’t leave him home and there’s a lot of prep in taking him. And we feel bad caging him. He’s a run-free rabbit in our home. But, we can only stay away from the coast for so long before we need a Pacific Fix.

And so, the motel reservation is made, the “don’t forget” list is on the counter and before long, we’ll be pulling out our luggage and heading to our happy place……we three, Lobo, Rabbit and me.