Sanctuary Rabbits: Earless Glenna Update

(archive extraction note: photos will be restored later,
subscribe to be notified, form scroll to right sidebar)

Just a little update on Miss Glenna Bun. She is doing very, very well. She is still being confined per the doctor's orders and she has just about had enough of it. Every evening, she demands her carrots (now that she knows what they are) but she knows she's going to get medicines first so she motions her head to the 2 syringes on my desk and looks at me. She wants her meds so she can get her veggies!

I've brought her up on the bed several times now to watch some TV and she doesn't seem comfortable. I think she is still apprehensive about the little dog and big cat who are often up here too but whom are 100% totally bunny trustworthy. She is slowing getting that into her head. She must have been pretty scared of dogs in the past though as a result of some experience with them.

STENCH EXPLAINED
When Glenna Bun first came in, I was told she'd been sprayed by a skunk 'or something.' No one who smelled her seemed sure what it was. Neither was I when I smelled her after the 'surgery' smell wore off. But I knew I'd smelled it before sometime. Well I remembered now. She has just been absolutely soaked to the bone in rabbit urine. She smells just like the 11 rabbits I helped animal control in nearby West Virginia confiscate from a backyard breeder four years ago this summer. They were sitting in milk crates in 104 degree heat in the July sun sitting in 5 or 6 inches of their own waste and urine. They had been drinking dew although a few had chewed up water 'bowls' (which were really just the bottoms of gallon milk jugs cut off) and they all smelled so bad it was unthinkable. And when I got them all home, I had to give each one a hot bath with lots of hand soap. Yet still they reeked for months afterward until their first shed. Glenna also has the telltale signs: urine stained fur all over her. It is impossible to remove urine stains from a rabbit's fur; you just have to wait until they shed.

Glenna smells like that even though she's had two descenting baths. When the a rabbit has been so completely doused over and over for long periods of time, that is what they smell like. She also came in with a spot on her nose that has the distinctive mark of a rabbit bite. She'd been bitten pretty badly on the nose but came away without serious (i.e., abscess) injury. It's unclear whether the abscess she had removed from her back was from flystrike (warbles) or the bite of another rabbit. It is in the right place for a rabbit who is being bitten by another one who is humping them. And she shows evidence also of having had a litter (or two or three or more) in the form of long teats.

She is a very patient lady though and obviously feels safe as she naps all the way over on her side. When she wakes, she looks at me hopefully as if to say 'pellets now?' but she only gets about a tablespoon of pellets per day. That's because of her double whammy malocclusion - incisor and molar - so she needs to eat mostly hay so her bite can correct itself.

EARS EXPLAINED
Her ears are turning white at the tips and I don't know what that means, it may just be fur growing in or something else. I'll talk to the vet about it on Monday. It might mean further necrosis but usually that's black although this may be the first stage. I did take some macro photos of her ears so I could study their structure while I prepared to flush the ear's of old lady Beatrix who has an ear infection. One of those photos is at the bottom of this page so if you dare, scroll all the way down and you'll see it. I didn't put it right under this post because it may be upsetting to some people.

A number of people have asked me about her ears wondering how this happened to her. Most people's first reaction was 'did a dog attack her?' and that answer is no - a rabbit attacked her! Rabbits are like that when unaltered. What happened to Glenna is that her ears were frostbitten. Considering that it's August and she has only just come inside where rabbits should live, she has been a little hobo for a long, long time. Or it may have very well happened before she even escaped the place where she used to live - they probably kept their rabbits outdoors, that's pretty much a given. Or this would not have happened. And it's why we never condone this heinous practice. If you do a Google search for 'frostbitten ears' you will find images of lots of animals whose ears look just like poor Glenna's.

OTHER NEWS
In other news, I have an excellent application on Mrs. Bojangles and am looking forward to her happy ending.