Allan's Last Adventures

By Becca

The baby rabbits have been trying out their little legs, which gets a bit scary when the homemade cages that they live in have rather large gaps between the wires.
 The cages work fine for the adult rabbits, but the babies are nearly five times smaller then their parents and they see the holes as nice doorways to the outside world.. :)
I watched one of Rosie's kits jump through one such portal yesterday when I was cleaning her cage.  The fat little baby scrambled around the cement floor a moment before I scooped it up and put him back in the nest.  I blocked off the holes with a few pieces of cardboard and kept cleaning.
So that night, when Dad called up from the basement saying that he had found a kit over by the floor drain,  I expected to see him holding one of Rosie's adventurous kits, and it was one of her's…but surprisingly it was the runt.

(Just a note:  we can't tell the gender of the kits yet but we still call them 'he' or 'she' and  tentatively name them, the runt we call Allan.  

Those of you who have watched season two of BBC's Robin Hood might know why, it has nothing to do with his size, it's because of where he is…)

I could hardly believe it.  I'm not being funny, but this little guy walks like a drunk man- he can hardly walk two steps without tumbling onto his side.  How on earth did he make it all the way over there!?!

The floor was wet near the drain.  Allan must have taken a tumble and was laying on his side when Dad found him.
 Now, a wet rabbit is a sorry sight, but a little runt who already has enough problems in his life and then wanders off and falls in a puddle = sadness.  The fireplace was turned on and I wrapped Allan in a dishtowel to dry him off.  His body was cold and his breathing was shallow, thankfully his nose was dry so at least he hadn't inhaled any water. I sat by the fire and rubbed his damp fur with the towel, trying to warm the shivering kit.  Soon his breathing normalized and he wiggled around, getting into a more comfortable position.
 He looked pretty funny, half his body a mess of wet spiky fur; the other half was dry and soft, perfectly normal.

Mom heated up some goat's milk for him and I fed him with a dropper while our family watched T.V.

 Once he was dry, warm, and had some milk in his tummy I snuggled him back into the nest with his foster siblings, and Beth put up cardboard walls to block his escape routes.

Guess who Dad found near the floor drain this morning?

Yeah… it was Allan.  He must of missed me :)
So during our morning Bible time, I was sitting next to the fire warming Allan up. He was dry this time, but a lone baby bunny on a cold basement floor still gets chilly pretty quick.  When we returned the little runaway home we looked around Sarah Jane's cage to see how he got out. We thought all exits where pretty well covered, but there was a gap under the water bottle. All he had to do was hoist himself over the side of tray, and drop though his escape hatch onto the floor.
 Now with every opening blocked off , we hope Allan will be a good little rabbit and stay safe and warm at home.

Who would of known that this little squirt would have such a big adventure?

Postscript (1-24-14): Allan was found by Dad this morning, out of the nest box, dead.  Sarah Jane was hovering over him, licking him, trying to revive him… we knew he would've gone sooner or later.  We were surprised that he had made it two weeks, he was so small and abnormal, but he certainly tried to make up for it…  
"Him, I liked."