Unexpected visitor....

Pictured above is our unexpected visitor - a baby bunny that’s only a few days old (his eyes haven’t yet opened).

Someone was working in our neighbours house and spotted the baby wandering rather unsteadily around the garden - there were 2 large dogs in the vicinity and it appeared that the rabbit hole the bunny had come out of had been dug up rather badly and there was no sign of a mother or any brothers or sisters so he popped round to ours to see if we’d be prepared to take it on because he has 2 dogs and 2 cats - probably not a very safe environment for a baby bunny to grow up in!

Mel has spent hours trolling the internet to discover how best to look after a brand new bunny and we’re pleased to note that all decent informational websites do say that it’s usually safe enough even after being hand fed by humans to release a bunny back into the wild at about 4-6 weeks which is our intention but that does mean that our parenting of the animal will overlap with the visit from my sister, her husband and our two nieces who might quite enjoy having a bunny to look at while they’re visiting - hopefully they’ll be happy to leave him behind and not insist on having one when they get back home!

This is all of course completely dependent on the bunny surviving the next week or so - given it’s survived it’s first night with us, we’re feeling pretty positive but you just never know.  We found ourselves at the pharmacy this morning trying to purchase pipettes to force feed the bunny and they kindly gave us a small syringe which we’re having some success with - the thing only weighs 65 grams right now and by all accounts should be putting on about 5 grams a day after hopefully drinking approx 15 grams (25% of its body weight) of milk each day - given in 3-4 doses throughout the day!

So - we’re caught in a dilemma - feeding and looking after an animal that farmers growing vegetables have a healthy dislike for.  We just have to hope that once released he survives to make a happy life elsewhere and not near our vegetables.  He’s got a tough life ahead regardless - we do live in wild boar territory and our neighbour is president of the hunting lodge and has at least a dozen dogs so his life certainly won’t be easy if he sticks around this area - we can just do our best to give him a healthy and happy start to life and wish him well once we send him on his way!