One day my friend/neighbor discovered some abandoned baby bunnies in her yard. There were probably about five of them. Well her family waited awhile and when no momma bunny returned they decided to take care of them. So this turned into my friend (we’ll call her Crayola) and my destiny to take it upon ourselves to care for these little, baby bunnies.
They were adorable and tiny and fluffy and we loved them like our own personal pets, except of course they were wild animals. What could go wrong when you take baby bunnies from their natural habitat and raise them yourself in a cardboard box? Also pretty sure if you see baby bunnies you are NOT supposed to pick them up and move them because the mom will come back eventually unless she was dead. No one should do what Crayola and I did in our attempt to take care of these bunnies.
But Crayola and I were clearly better caretakers for these baby bunnies we “rescued.” I mean we were like in fourth or fifth grade. We knew what we were doing. Right?
First of all we had our baby bunnies in a shoe box and Crayola had one of those rabbit fur pelts and put it in the box to make the bunnies more comfortable, but looking back on it that’s kinda creepy because it’s just like, “Here’s a rabbit skin! Isn’t the death of your brethren so comforting…”
Well I think we fed the bunnies lettuce or milk or something and uhhh they were doing “fine,” living it up in their box, but we decided a box really wasn’t a great home and I used to have hamsters so we thought maybe they’d prefer a decked out hamster cage?
So we took the bunnies over to my house and put them in my fancy, colorful hamster cage with different climbing tubes and such. It was pretty cool, but Crayola thought that she’d help the bunnies appreciate the true joy of the hamster cage and shoved a bunny into one of the climbing tubes.
The thing is that bunnies aren’t made to climb up tubes like hamsters so they can’t actually use the tubes, so when Crayola shoved it up there all that happened was the baby bunny got stuck. We panicked about our bunny being trapped in the tube and I think we were able to get it out by a combination of vigorously shaking the bunny and taking the cage apart, but we did get the bunny out but I’m sure it was traumatized and quite literally shook.
Later we were just squatting on the deck with our bunnies running around us. Not gonna lie it was pretty cute, but I got tired of squatting and sat down, not realizing that one bunnies just decided it was good idea to crawl right under my butt. So yeah I sat on one of our bunnies. I felt so bad! I love animals and sat on a little, baby bunny. I didn’t realize he was there and I… sat on him.
After that, that bunny had a limp from being squished. It was a pretty bad day for bunnies with one getting stuck and one getting sat on, but they were still fine.
We put them outside overnight, in case the mom came back, and during the night something bad happened. One of the bunnies seemed to sleep with its mouth open or something and bugs got in and laid eggs inside it and basically started killing from the inside out. It was really gross and upsetting and we didn’t really know what to do. The bunny was still alive so we kinda just quarantined it away from the other bunnies and did our best to take care of it, but later that day it inevitably died.
We buried it in Crayola’s backyard and had a little funeral service and carved its bunny name that we had given it onto a rock. That was the first casualty.
The one thing I will have you know is it wasn’t the one I sat on that died first. He was still fine.
But over the next night or two most of the rest of the bunnies died, including the one I sat on, and so we had only one bunny left still alive. We added more names to the rock and had another funeral service. It was a very somber affair and we didn’t have the best hopes for our last bunny after that, but we did our best.
But low and behold, the next night the last bunny also died. At the time we decided this one probably died because he was too cold and lonely without any of siblings, but I don’t know if that was the reason. It probably had more to do with not getting fed properly and that sort of thing but maybe also being cold.
Anyway so all of the bunnies died and it was really upsetting and tragic for Crayola and I. When we brought the bunnies to my house my mom had told me they were all gonna die and we should put them back and I told my friend this but it turns out they were pretty certain the mom died so either way they were probably going to die but we should have maybe taken them to one of those wild animal rescue shelter place thingies.
Also Crayola told me years later that apparently her very supportive mom of our bunny nursery also knew all the bunnies were gonna die, but the only difference was that unlike my very blunt mommy she didn’t tell us that, so we really believed we were going to save these bunnies, but no one else did. I’m kinda upset we were allowed to take care of them in spite of this.
The moral of the story this time is to leave bunnies where they are unless you are certain the mom is dead then maybe take them to a shelter, but don’t care for them yourself especially if you’re a dumb, little kid. Also if you’re mom is like mine you should probably listen to her even though her advice is not always nice.
Honestly I feel pretty bad about this story but let it act as a cautionary tale when dealing with baby wildlife.