Three Blind Bunnies, Earless Bob & Glenna the Good's Rainbow Hop Rememberance

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Three Blind Bunnies, Earless Bob, Beau and
Glenna the Good's Rainbow Hop Rememberance:

Beau and Bob Saved from the Jaws of Humans

Bob on his first night of safety

Published on International Rabbit Day 9-28-14

Sunday August 31, 2014

Four years ago today was a big day for Bright Eyes Sanctuary and today, the circle repeats itself like a running bun. Today, this little Sanctuary for special needs and hard-to-adopt rabbits finds itself with another earless rabbit who has simply awful teeth, three blind bunnies, two of whom are very old, and buns with various other maladies including megacolon, a thymoma, simple dental disease, and one very tender, sensitive tummy (belonging to the Prince with a Thousand Enemies) which requires copious amounts of romaine every day, several times a day to maintain hydration and thus, function.

I don't know if I'll finish this newsletter before midnight tonight but I write most of it on a day which has come to have much meaning as anniversaries of many life changing events for our sanctuary, myself and my family. So it seems to be the time to introduce to you two of our new sanctuary bunnies whom we whisked away from the jaws of abused hunting dogs and an elderly alcoholic trigger happy psychopath widower whose recently deceased wife's vulnerable hutch bunnies were being shot, sicced on by large hunting dogs (we presume they were hunting dogs because of their owner's gun fixation) and killed for food.

Beau accepts a carrot

Two stoic boys remained as survivors of this rural version of Danté's inferno, each kept alone in separate hutches, each scared to death and living on borrowed time in a situation only imaginable in a nightmare. Through a convoluted grapevine of animal lovers of various kinds, word reached me about an earless rabbit caught in a crossfire and awaiting his firing squad execution if he was not removed immediately from the situation, and one other bun had also survived thus far in that same hell hole. Knowing the mindset of some types, I suspected a manipulative plot to get me to cave and accept these bunnies. But investigation of the individuals involved in the dissemination of this dark news proved to be pure intentions of mercy for the bunnies and the two bunnies were indeed in mortal danger.

Enter Beau and Bob. Infested with fur mites, Beau also had irritated eyes from improper sawdust bedding and Bob, well, Bob's ears were missing, presumably cut off and his teeth were horrible with lower incisor tusks jutting out and upper incisor tusks curling around his upper jaw and then curling once again outward while threatening to pierce his cheeks. Their diet had been only crapple-quality corn pellets. Their coats were in poor condition. They were shivering with terror and nearly perished just with the scare of a car ride. But a neighbor of the psychopath had worked with a local lady who did one type of exotic rescue and managed to get this sad story to my radar where it pinged loudly if mostly because of the situation's close proximity. 

B!nky (Bubbles) is comforted by husbun Orion

Bright Eyes Sanctuary has been closed to new intakes for some years and we now have low adoptions as many of our alumni have been returned and, sadly, many come back in very poor shape or with poor habits for various reasons. My personal financial and health concerns also preclude our indefinite involvement in rabbit adoptions these days as those adopters of BES will know, adoptions are an incredible amount of grueling and detailed work which a post-recession (is it post- or ongoing?) climate shriveled up just about all chunks of this BES volunteer's free time and resources. So we focus on a careful, super cautious approach to continued rehoming attempts for those on their first, second, or third go around in the adoption merry go round.

Personally, my health has put pressures on my energy levels that just don't allow me, as the main face of this organization, to spend 40-50 hours a week rehoming rabbits anymore. Those days of 10-15 adoptions a month are over for more reasons than one. My focus had shifted to the maintenance of a high quality of life for our Sanctuary bunnies. But Beau and Bob needed a safety net, the absence of which had already failed the other rabbits in their home. So we pulled up our sleeves and brought them here this past Memorial Day weekend.

Details of Bob's ears

Bob's ears, however, were probably not cut off by a human but rather by a terrified, inexperienced mother rabbit perhaps caring for her young in a vulnerable outdoor hutch during a thunderstorm or other frightening experience. Many species of mothers do things like this in less than optimal situations. His horrible teeth are genetic but probably worsened by poor nutrition since birth. Beau is in pretty good shape. Both buns have been vetted and had blood work checked. They needed to enjoy good care and diet just a while longer before neutering - they were neutered last next week. Both of them, along with BES' 50 other Sanctuary rabbits, who have all had their annual exams, are given premium food and enrichment and are very lucky to be right where they are.

B!nky (Bubbles) eyes are examined

But BES could really use some help with the annual costs of this veterinary care as well as their supplies like tons of Carefresh every month, Oxbow pellets, bungalows, treats, willow toys and hay. Isn't it great that there's this little life boat out there in the sea of misery for animals in this world? We know that we are very good at doing what we do best which is taking care of bunnies. We think we do this well because our bunnies live so long, like over 16 now for Josephine, 11+ for several others, and various other ages. Dr. Carr of Maryland Avian and Exotics is our exotics vet who cares for all our bunnies and they love her! (Follow her on FB) But our bill for the annual exams this year was almost $5,000!

Orion gets weighed for his exam

Also for those who are clients of Dr. Lisa Carr who don't already know, she is now located in the newly opened Hope Advanced Veterinary Care center in Rockville, Maryland at 1 Taft Court. Their website is http://rockville.hopecenter.com Dr. Carr is still available for house calls as well. She did all of the BES annual exams via house calls, in several trips.  However, if you have a rabbit emergency, you should call Pender Vet in Fairfax, VA at 703.654.3100 or if you are in the Baltimore greater area, call Animal Emergency Hospital in Bel Air, MD 410-420-PAWS. The latter is used regularly by BES board members who love them!

Bob in profile

Bob will need his incisors trimmed every 30 days until we feel he may be ready to have them all removed just like Earless Glenna had done four years ago. That will be expensive. Do any of you remember Earless Glenna? Well if your memory isn't so good, we have republished the original blog posts on BES official blog, Running Bun Magazine, at this link: http://bit.ly/RBM-Glenna The photos have yet to be restored to these posts but we'll do that as time allows. Nevertheless, it is touching to reread all the annals of that brave bunny's epic journey. And we wanted to have it out there on this day.

We will never forget our beautiful earless empress, Glenna, and her stoicism in the face of so much of which seemed fueled by her love for her porridge! What a spirit she was! One person of the many who she inspired was Bob Smith who became a stalwart supporter of BES but who sadly passed away recently. So when faced with naming another earless rabbit, this time a male, it only made sense to honor the memory of this special Glenna fan by naming the lucky little fellow after him. Hence, we have Earless Bob. And Beau is just named for his handsomeness. Additionally, Bob Smith's beloved bunny, Tommy, (both pictured below) was reunited with his doting owner in Heaven just a week or so ago.

Bob holds his little Tommy

We don't usually send out more than two fundraising emails a year but we really need your help now with these operating expenses. Would you please consider a donation to Bright Eyes Sanctuary? It would be 100% tax deductible and we have seen a great decrease in the amount of active supporters in the last few years. So please consider donating whatever you might be able to so we can continue spoiling these bunnies and giving them the best veterinary care possible. Thank you so very much!

PLEASE HELP WITH OUR CONTINUING MISSION

"Can You See My Will-to-Be?"

-RP

Editors note: Running Bun Magazine is published strictly for the express benefit of Bright Eyes Sanctuary. All revenues earned collected and donated through Running Bun Magazine are directly deposited into the Bright Eyes Sanctuary coffers. Your support of our publication, which we hope you find useful, is greatly appreciated and needed. Your patronage is paramount. 

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Sanctuary Bunny Gallery:

 

Our Presiding Angel Bunny - Glenna

Our hero forever and inspiration.

Josephine

 Now approaching 17, she's healed from liver problem causing heart murmur.

Orion guarding Bubbles

Orion has megacolon & Bubbles is mostly blind

Buno Pookah

This rock star is battling a suspected thymoma and winning.

This gallery will be continued in subsequent posts in October!

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ALSO CHECK OUT OUR NEW Fine Art America STORE

Fear and Loathing and Leporiphobia

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"You didn't think I was serious just because I carry a rabbit around?!"

Thumper S. Thompson here with more thoughts on our glorious Halloween Running Bun Magazine issue this month, October 2013.

As you already know, Shauna, bassist of White Zombie and cover bun this month, is a drop dead gorgeous albino mini-lop rabbit. She has pure, heavenly white fur and beautiful white eyes. White eyes, you say? Well, yea, because if we collectively refer to the color of the pupil of an eye to determine what the 'eye color' is, then all humans have black eyes!

Obviously, that's not the case. Albino humans, who are legally blind, don't have black pupils but rather, dark rose-colored pupils and the same goes for rabbits. The color of albino bunnies' pupils can range from bright red to deep, deep rose but the color of their irises are usually anywhere from a pastel lavender to softest pink to white. Shauna, the cover bunny girl in question, has irises of the palest rose, really white. So let's not say she has bloody red eyes, shall we? And why does it matter? It matters to me, Thumper S. Thompson, bunzo journalist.

As far as albinism goes in bunny rabbits, the redder their pupils, the more albino they are and the worse their eyesight. Again, I'll refer to human albinos, they are legally blind. So a bun with blood red pupils has very poor eye sight indeed. But almost no one shows them the same patient tolerance and required legal accommodations to which their human albino counterpart is entitled. And rabbits are a freaking prey animal, for Peter's Sake! They can barely see and so, of course, they're afraid if some hooman with fast moving hands and body is hovering over them like a darned zombie waiting to disembowel them!

But rabbits, in general, while admitting that generalizations are generally a poor way to form any kind of opinion, are a spunky lot. They'll defend themselves, for the most part, yet many times they give a very tolerant snort to warn you that they're disgruntled with your behavior. Then, if you still don't learn, there is always nature's ultra effective device, negative reinforcement. This usually results in a 'bite' which usually isn't anything more than a nip. Yet, the deliverance of such is a blow to the ego and the emotions of the receiver. Yeah, it hurts hoomans feelings to have a cute little bunny rabbit nip them when all they're trying to do is communicate that they, the rabbit, are disgruntled with the inadequate intelligence of hoomans requiring this type of education from a supposed lower species.

The reason I'm telling you this is that an actual real life phobia of such celestially beautiful bunny rabbits exists and it is called leporiphobia. Leporiphobia is named based on the root word of lepus, meaning, of course, rabbit. Now these poor souls who suffer from this phobia have my deepest sympathy because they must go through life never knowing the truth about these wonderful animals, these albino bunnies. There is something so angelic, so pure, so ethereal, so perfect, so rapturous, heck, so celestial about these gorgeous animals, that perhaps the fear of them is really a fear of something more holy unto thou than themselves. Yeah, that's it.

I think I did once actually have a friend who had leporiphobia. But that's another story for another day, and it's a beautiful story I won't tell today. Today, I wanted to talk about how one hooman may develop this phobia if they happened to watch a certain movie; that movie is Seven Psychopaths.

It's a great movie, Seven Psychopaths. I loved it. Our staff  photographer, Rabbit Photog, likes it too but had a rather hard time with her initial viewing of it. However, I know there were two reasons she bit her lip as she watched it and she was determined to watch it; the first reason is because there are about twenty or thirty sweet little albino mini-rex bunny rabbits in it, and the second is because her favorite leprechaun was playing the main character and that would be Colin Farrell.

The movie also stars the master of deadpan comedy, Christopher Walken; emerging comedic genius, Sam Rockwell; Tom Waits as the gentle bunny handling tour de force; Woody Harrelson as a most truly psychopathic mobster; and Abbie Cornish and Olga Kurylenko in small, short-lived but forceful roles. My favorite female character is played by Amanda Mason Warren as Maggie, the wife of Tom Waits’ younger self. Linda Bright Clay appears as Myra, Han's wife.  

As far as the rabbits go, the lovelies make their first appearance early in the movie when Zachariah Rigby (Waits) shows up at Billy Bickle's (Rockwell) house in response to an ad Bickle placed in the L.A. Times. Zach then has tea (of course! rabbit peeps only have tea! with a mad hatter, no less!) with Marty (Farrell) and ensues the story of his transition from serial killer to gentle rabbit caretaker, a role which costs him the love of his life and wife, Maggie. As Zach gets up to leave, we see one of the rare occurrences of a Hollywood film demonstrating the proper way to pick up a rabbit. Carrie, the albino bunny, has been hanging out on the coffee table enjoying a carrot while listening to her hooman recount many, gory murders he has committed. Before that, a flashback to the horrifying murder at which Zach met his first rabbit again shows the innate gentleness of Zach's character. This murder scene flashback is also graced with the twenty or thirty albino bunny rabbits, all hopping about utterly unconcerned about the grisly hooman behavior which surrounds them.

A bunny drinks the blood of her caretaker after his grisly murder by Maggie (Warren)

The bunny makes an appearance again at the movie's end, post credits, when Zach phones Marty from a phone booth to express his disappointment in Marty over a broken promise, one for which Marty agrees to forfeit his life. While Zach and Marty talk, the bunny sits on the phone book shelf of the booth and occasionally stands up to explore the glass enclosure. One can't help but wonder if this is some sort of vague homage to Farrell's stand out performance in a movie named after such an enclosure. One also can't help but wonder, are there really any phone booths left in L.A.? We're also treated to Waits' brilliantly delivered line, "You didn't think I was serious just because I carry a rabbit around?" That line is sure to find it's own place of fame in movie history.

It's not often Hollywood treats us to such a nice portrayal of the bunny rabbit, much less the beautiful albino bunny rabbit. Hence, I felt all involved deserved a shout out to help promote this sure-to-be-a-cult hit comedy, Seven Psychopaths. All brilliantly written, directed, and acted.

However, for you faint of heart peeps out there, this movie is shockingly violent, gruesome, and unsentimental BUT no animals are harmed. Nevertheless, for some, the movie could actually induce a sudden, most fierce and unforgiving lifetime filled with the dreaded leporiohobia! Beware!

Zachariah (Tom Waits) phones Marty (Colin Farrell) from a phone booth with his rabbit, Carrie

Happy October, folks.

TST

 -Thumper S. Thompson

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