Serena Bunny

As you may be aware, we lost Serena on Saturday, just a few days after surgery to remove a growth behind her eye. I just wanted to share here today a few of the happy memories I have of my time being around her.

Caroline asked me to foster Sushi and Serena last winter as she felt Serena would benefit being indoors during the cold months. I happily agreed because I had a real soft spot for Sushi, a super friendly but odd little chap who in many ways reminded me of my dear departed Santa.

It seems odd to say this now, but Serena I wasn't so keen on at the time. She looked strange for a start - small, oddly shaped (kind of elongated), massive dewlap - and for some reason I’d never experienced much of any character in her. If anything she seemed like a bit of a grump. But as is often the case, it's the ones you don't expect to that end up taking up the biggest space in your heart.

My perceptions of the pair changed when they arrived at my house. My usual experience of opening a pet carrier of foster bunnies was seeing either fear or extreme caution. Sometimes they don’t even come out without major encouragement. Not so Serena. She marched straight out, looked around and then gave me a look that seemed to say “Oh. So this is where I'm living now is it? Fair enough.” Then promptly made herself right at home. Meanwhile, though calm and not particularly bothered by the move, Sushi was clearly going to enthusiastically blame me for everything he didn't like from that moment on.

In those first moments in my home she gave me a quick peek at her true character and somehow it already felt like she was part of the family.

The next few months Serena was a joy to live with (though her bottom wasn't always low maintenance), packed full of little quirks I'd not seen in any other bunny. She continued to surprise me daily and even demonstrated her bold, fearless attitude to life on a visit to the vets. I found myself having to reassure the vet that the reason Serena's heart and breathing rates were so low compared to other bunnies was that unlike them she was perfectly happy on the examination table pottering about and discovering new things. She was like that everywhere.

So that's how I will always remember her. The bold and beautiful little soul who enjoyed life wherever it took her. Rest in peace Serena.

Serena Recovery Time

Thanks to a number of generous friends (and Facebook fans) of the Rescue, Serena had her operation on Wednesday. She is now back at the Rescue and starting her slow recovery.

"Don't give me your sympathy, give me your parsley! And maybe another bottle of that magic pain medicine..."

The lump behind her eye turned out to be an abscess rather than a tumour and was removed by the same surgeon that Whisky has been saved by on a number of occasions. Once she is over the initial recovery period, Serena and her partner Sushi will most likely be moving in with a couple of our committee members to live as house rabbits. There she will have a safe and unchanging environment where she can learn to race around navigating with her remaining eye and senses.

We all wish you a speedy recovery, little one!

NB - If you are feeling brave you can see the side-view of her, showing the extent of the surgery, here.

Thoughts for Serena

No funny tale today. Instead I'd like to update you on sweet little Serena, who lived in my house with her partner Sushi last winter. Currently living at the Rescue, she has been doing really well in the warmer weather despite her stiff legs, but we found out today that she has some sort of tumour or abscess growing behind one of her eyes.

We are hoping to have her seen by a vet who has experience with this issue in rabbits to see what the best treatment might be, so please pray, send good vibes or just think positive thoughts for our dear Serena. I will update you when we know more.

DIY SOS OMG

Some time ago I said I'd tell you what I'd been up to at the Rescue but I've been a bit slack. So here, several weeks on, is that post.

While Whisky was trying to bond with Jubilee, I also spent a number of days at the Rescue. Wanting to stay out of the way of the bonding, so as not to have any effect on his attitude, I was there to do other things and free up Caroline so she could give them expert supervision. The upshot was, I spent most of the week cleaning and organising the other volunteers.

Since the Rescue is currently desperate for volunteers for DIY maintenance jobs, you might be wondering why it is that I spend my time there cleaning when I could be fixing things, so let me explain by way of example why this is. For on my last day there, looking for something different to do, out came my tools as I decided that Sushi and Serena's run was in need of a handle to make it easier to open the door. Here are the results of my efforts.

I have to say I am very proud of my work. But one green handle, two screws, how long do you think it took me? Well I won't keep you in suspense. It took me over five hours.

In my defence, the reason it took so long was that I was so determined to do a proper job, I decided to take the whole door off, re-do the mesh and paint the wood. I estimated this would take 20 minutes or so...one hour in it was starting to look like an episode of 1970's TV sitcom "Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em".

So if we learned nothing else that week, we definitely learned why I leave all the DIY to Stuart.

"I'll admit I'm no expert on these things, but aren't I supposed to be with Serena on the OTHER side of this door?

Last Chance, Bond...

"Where did everybunny go?"

Foster bunnies Sushi and Serena are due to go back to the Rescue soon. They were originally only supposed to be with me for the winter and after all this time I will be sad to see them go, but I unfortunately I am not able to maintain three sets of bunnies at home long term. It is a problem of both space and time, especially with all the cleaning and trying to give them all a fair share of garden playtime every day. Many of the constraints would go away if I could combine two (or all three) of the groups, but group bondings are tricky enough to begin with without throwing Whisky's peculiarities into the mix.

Whisky did cope with Spangle, Porridge and Sprat last summer, when it was their rejection of him that was the problem (admittedly because of his social skills), but his attitude to other bunnies has changed since then and things are much more difficult.

But I didn't want to give up on the idea, especially since Whisky and the foster buns seem to be perfectly OK with sharing a room with just a mesh divider between them. So we had another session in the garden this week to see if there was any chance they could work things out. Sushi was still his usually soppy self, accepting of anybun (he will happily groom Whisky on request) and for once Whisky played nicely with him, but this time it was Serena's turn to make things difficult. She has a somewhat limited field of vision and insists on lunging teeth first at anything that comes suddenly close into view surprising her. Sushi is quite used to getting accidentally chomped, Whisky is not. And he didn't take too kindly to it either.

So Whisky was packed off back into the house, where he went back to his room to sulk, Sushi was allowed in as well to go back to hiding behind the sofa and poor confused Serena spent the rest of the afternoon wondering why she had been left to eat all the tasty grass by herself again. Not that she complained.

Birdsong

"Ooo, what's that?"

The sun came out and it brought with it a gathering of birds, singing tunefully to each other from high up in the trees. This, pictured above, was Serena's reaction to one particularly loud individual - notice the alert (for a lop) ears, angled forwards. Cute!

Sushi's reaction was slightly different. Rather than angling his ears towards the bird, he tore past me back into the house at high speed and hid behind the sofa.

Here Comes The... Oh. More Rain.

Fluffularily Played?

Did you ever have something happen to you where at the time it all seemed so reasonable, but thinking back on it you suddenly realised you totally got "played"?! So here's what happened to me this month, the story of which, I later found out, is similar to that of several of the regular volunteers.

There I am, working away scraping wee-soaked shavings from the corner of some shed or other when Caroline appears as-if-by-magic beside me.

"You know all these litters of oh-so-cute baby bunnies we suddenly have?" she says, all casually and what-not. "Well, I've been thinking how vulnerable they are in the cold outdoors of the Rescue and how they might benefit from being indoors for the winter months. I wonder if some of the volunteers might consider taking them in for a while..."

So later that afternoon, after some careful consideration of the logistics of having a group of tiny floofy joy-bundles somewhere in my house I say to Caroline "Well, I guess, if they're all small an' all, and are happy to live mostly in one of those big cages I have for emergencies, I guess, maybe I could squeeze them in somewhere in my house..."

"Great!" Caroline says, "We'll sort that out next week!".

But by next week, Caroline has been thinking again. "You know what?" she says. "You know who would really benefit from being indoors - some of our elderly bunnies! You wouldn't mind taking them instead would you...?"

So the next thing I know, instead of having a cage of cute little munchkins causing excitable (but contained) chaos in the corner of one room, I have:

• Whisky giving me grief because I've given half his room to Sushi and Serena for the winter.
• Grumpy glares from Jemima and Elvis because they are having to share garden time with yet another pair of bunnies.

Whisky getting his grump on over

sharing his newly partitioned room

Not that I can complain too much - of all the pairs at the Rescue, Sushi and Serena are one of the friendliest. And apart from all the extra sweeping, they are not exactly high maintenance (they do like to spread the hay from their litter trays all over the floor before they eat it).

So it seemed like I didn't come out too badly from the last-minute switch, but the story doesn't end there. Two weeks after they move in, I get a text message from Caroline.

"Can I borrow that cage you didn't use? Another unwanted litter of babies just handed in..."

But guess what? By the time Caroline arrived at my house the plan had changed once more. Instead of loading my cage into her car, we ended up loading the bunnies into my cage. In my spare room. [sigh]

So there you go. That's how I went from living with three quiet bunnies to having, after some subtle manipulation from Caroline, a houseful of chaos. It is also why once again I've found myself with no time to take photo's or write much about the Rescue this month.

Still, I may be constantly exhausted and spending all my time cleaning up after somebun or other, but when hard work looks like this it's hard to resent it!

The moment Sushi notices that Jemima

is watching him with disapproving interest

Serena remembering how annoying muddy feets

can be after two weeks indoors

"I am Meeko. And you are...?"

Shanti, Pikachu, Mr Magoo, Pooki and Meeko