Sunday, November 4, 2012

Simon's stomach didn't weather the storm well...

Poor Simon did not have a great time with hurricane Sandy.  Her banshee-like howling caused the little guy to get spooked and stop eating his hay overnight.  I woke up to find the little guy draped over the edge of his litter box (he'd fallen asleep in it), which is something he never does.  I gently scooped him up to find him laying on top of an untouched pile of hay.  Not a good sign if he hasn't eaten in 8 hours, so early GI stasis was what we were looking at.  I managed to get him to nibble on some oats and a bit of celery, then let him out with River to see if that would lift his spirits and encourage him to eat a bit more.
River took Simon's inactivity as permission to play with all of his toys and to sample any food or mint tea I set in front of him.
Feeling slightly cranky from an icky tummy, Simon decided to get away from River by visiting our "library" for a bit.  Sadly, his hiding spot was discovered a short time later.
This is when we started to wonder if River might be just a teensy bit autistic given her utter lack of social skills in noticing that her brother was not feeling well.
Okay, make that autistic savant since she's looking at my fundamentals of clinical chemistry book.  I choose to believe that she was looking for a book to figure out what was wrong with Simon and simply couldn't read the title from the other side of him, hence her hopping over him in the previous pic.  Yay!  She was doing a tough love thing earlier.  Yep, that's what she was doing.
After some mint tea and some greens, Simon finally started feeling better later that evening and was able to use his litter box again.  Yay, we didn't need to take him to the vet!
So, to summarize:  Bunnies can get really stressed out, stop eating and give themselves GI stasis.  Mint tea, lots of greens and timothy hay helped to sort him out and get things moving again.

2 comments:

Kristin said...

hahaha. Oh River...definitely not the same response that Simon had during her GI stasis bout. Poor little guy.

Courtney said...

Yeah, I felt so sorry for the little fella being ignored by his sister that I kept giving him noogies and belly rubs all day. That earned me more than a few happy chomps and a bunny kiss on the nose from him. He's such a little sweetheart. :)