I found a baby bunny! (And I'm KEEPING it!)

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
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Last night Mr. Wonderland and I, along with the visiting summer student who’s staying with us for 5 months were driving home and Mr. W. spotted a teeny, tiny little baby bunny, lost and disoriented, hopping towards the main road (it’s residential, but there’s still a lot of traffic on it.)

SS (summer student) jumped out of the car and Mr. W. and I followed and we tried to shoo the bunny back towards the park by our place. Bunny was pretty tame and eventually, rather than running around like idiots, SS scooped the bunny up in her hoodie and we put him (her?) and a copse of trees nearby.

As we were walking in the house, SS mentioned that it was a tiny bunny and I kind of twigged on something. In my particular neck of the woods we don’t have wild bunnies. We have hares. Hundreds, and hundreds of hares.

Well, a (3 week old) baby bunny (did I mention that SS is a vet student?) is not going to survive without it’s mummy for more than about 2 minutes around these parts. If it’s not squished by a car, or eaten by a coyote, it would be killed by territorial hares.

So we went back out and got it. It’s rather telling that we were able to find it a second time, in the dark, at 11:00 at night. We’ve put it in a dog carrier with shavings and pet grass and water and a little bunny nest (which it promptly went and laid down in).

Today we discussed it and we’re going to keep it as a pet. In other circumstances we would try to release it, but it’s very young (as I said, between 2 and 3 weeks old) and we’re in an apartment condo with only a balcony - not yard or grass that we could get it used to.

Tonight we’re going to pick up some kitten formula (it’s much easier to find than bunny formula) and SS is going to see if she can nurse the poor little guy well enough to get him over the next month or so. On a positive note, an initial inspection reveals an energetic, perky bunny with a good coat and no obvious injuries or diseases. SS is doing additional research today to determine what sort of potential diseases it might have, and we’ll get any sort of treatments necessary so our other pets don’t have issues. Currently bunny is in isolation from everyone else. A good thing is that we don’t have fleas around here so there’s no worries about them getting passed to anyone.
If SS is successful, the Wonderland household will once again be bunnified. :slight_smile:

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Good one you. Hopefully you can get some bunny pics up soon.

I had a pet bunny as a kid and she was so soft and cute. I’d like to get another one someday.

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Good luck. I was never able to keep alive the baby bunnies my cat brought in the house–I’ve heard they’re just so nervous the stress alone can make them keel over, and if they’re “bigger than a lemon” they’re probably fine on their own. Cottontails wean about 3 - 4 weeks so it may not even want milk.

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Was he wearing a waistcoat and carrying a pocketwatch? If so, you might want to back away slowly.

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Well, it is bigger than a lemon, but not much. There ARE cottontails in Alberta, but NONE where we live. Not once in 10 years of living here, running at 5 am or walking the dog at 11 pm have I seen a cottontail rabbit. As I said, THOUSANDS of hares but never a rabbit.

We’re speculating that maybe a child found it and brought it home and then mom or dad wouldn’t let them keep it and released it somewhere they thought it would be ok. Dunno, but the little guy was pretty discombobulated last night, and drank a tonne of water when we put it in the cage so it was probably pretty dehydrated.

I said to Mr. Wonderland that if we were going to put it back outside, we may as well just smash it over the head with a frying pan because it had basically no chance of making it out there. Particularly not when it kept heading for the busy road.

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Pictures!!!

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Yay for baby bunny rescues!

In the absence of Alice’s bunny pictures, here’s a cute one to tide you over.

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thanks Shayna! i didn’t think i could make it much longer.

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same here. Our cat bounded up on the porch with something in its mouth when I was a kid. I made him drop it, and found a live baby rabbit. We put it in a shoebox, and my mother ran out to get a toy baby bottle to feed it with, but it died before she got home.

It might have been fear, but i suspect internal injuries would be a more likely explanation.

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Just curious - why exactly did you decide to take the bunny home with you? Because it was cute and you thought it would probably die (more quickly) if you didn’t? Rabbits aren’t exactly threatened species.

The other day on the golf course I saw some people trying to keep a hawk from killing some baby ducks. Yeah, the duckies were cute, but I didn’t understand it.

I’ve never kept a rabbit - is there any difference between wild and domesticated rabbits when it comes to suitability as pets?

Final thought (not determinative), but is keeping a wild animal legal where you live?

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Well, I’m currently at my office, and hence there is no bunny here. However, when I return home tonight I’ll see if I can get a couple for you. :slight_smile:

He’s REALLY cute.

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Just wanted to say good luck, I had to post in this thread at least once!

Aww, baby bunny!

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Well, that’s kind of what rabbits are for; a universal food source for all predators and carrion-eaters. It’s all part of Frith’s plan.

Seriously, I’ve never heard of anyone having much luck with cottontail rabbits in captivity (I’m guessing that what you found is a Nuttall’s Cottontail (Sylvilagus nuttallii)); they tend to be highly stressed and easily die of disease, and they’re not particularly amenable to domestication the way European rabbits (sometimes called hares but not true members of genus Lepus, which are generally not domesticatable) are. Rabbits are also social animals and so need companionship. Of course, you are correct that the poor fellow will probably die if released into the wild, but his chances of living a long life in captivity are not that great, either.

A small animal veterinarian should be familiar with the common illnesses in rabbits and I don’t think that keeping a rabbit is prohibited (unlike some other wild species that can be rabies carriers like skunks and raccoons) so there shouldn’t be problems on that angle.

Good luck, and don’t read Watership Down to it as bedside reading.

Stranger

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Last week I saw a rabbit crossing as my sister drove me to her house.
“Awww!” I said, “It’s a bunny.”
“It’s not a Bunny!” said my irritated sister, who’s just bought a house and is trying to get the grounds fixed up (and free from local critters), “It’s a Damned Rabbit!.”

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2 years ago when I lived in a crappy apartment complex in south Miami. I was walking through the pool enclosure when I looked and saw a baby white bunny. I said, “Hey, Bunny!” and my ex and I proceeded to catch her and take her home. We got her a cage and basically let her run around the house and get used to us. Oh, she is potty trained! (You will definitely want to do this. Put a box or bin full of paper fluff in a corner and put her in the bin. She’ll get the picture. It’s good that you found yours young. It makes things easier.)

She now lives with me and is a happy bunny face. Her name is Blue.
P.S. - Bunnies chew stuff. You’ve been warned.

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Oh, cute! A baby bunny! I will warn you, hhand raising baby bunnies can be heartbreaking. I’ve mentioned my buddy who worked at a wildlife rehab center and they once had adorable baby bunnies, but he said they are quite notorious for dying without their mommies no matter how dilligent you are in taking care of them. (They had a whole litter of them, and when I went back at the end of the week only two were still alive).

If your wee bunny was out on its own, hopefully he/she is old enough to be past that more delicate stage and you can have your very own bunny rabbit. And hug him. And suqeeze him. And call him George.

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Looks like her name should be “White With Demonic Red Eyes”

I hate to tell you, but your cute bunny is possessed.

Get the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch.

…

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Yep, pretty much. Also, I miss having a pet bunny and this one is REALLY cute.

Yes, somewhat. Because this bunny is so young we should be able to domesticate it quite a bit, but it will be more work than a pet store bunny.

Depends on the animal.

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CalMeacham, that would explain her unquenchable thirst for blood.

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Maybe he just wants carrot juice.

Stranger