Boop!

Thanks for going to the emergency vet with me, Mr. Giraffe!

So that happened.

While we were doing our usual Friday evening cage cleaning with Naomi out first, I was in front of Apollo's cage and both of them bonked noses while I was giving them both noogies.  Yay, a good interaction!

Naomi hopped off to explore while big human handed me her water dish to set aside for later cleaning, during the hand-off, Naomi circled back around and saw Apollo standing up with her paws on the cage bars watching us and decided to chomp down on Apollo's front left paw.  Pure chaos ensued, baby bunny screaming and flailing, water was flung everywhere, I got Naomi away from Apollo while big human herded her back into her cage.

I tried to calm Apollo down a bit before scooping her up to assess the damage, which was thankfully only a bite between two of her toes that removed a bit of fur and skin under it.  That could have been far worse, but it still needed looked at by a vet.  I gently cleaned her paw with some dawn dish soap and water then set her in her travel cage with Mr. Giraffe.  So, at 8:45pm on a Friday night while soaking wet, I frantically called the big regional emergency vet who said they were at capacity and gave the numbers for a couple others in the area.  Thankfully the next emergency vet about 35 minutes away had space to see Apollo, though we were told that they were also very busy and that it would be a good idea to bring something to entertain ourselves with.  Nice!

Baby Apollo was a huge hit with all the emergency vet staff!  She was the best behaved little munchkin letting me pick her up multiple times for weighing, health assessment, pain med shot, and getting her paw shaved and cleaned.  In between all that, she'd munch on the hay or an alfalfa cube in her carrier, nuzzle Mr. Giraffe, bang her baby keys around, and gave me kisses on the nose twice through the cage bars.

After all was said and done, they just wanted me to let the wound air-dry and heal without placing any bandages or ointments on it.  We got a couple canisters of pre-filled antibiotic syringes and another of pre-filled pain medicine that will be given for the next week.  We got back home a bit after 2am.  No one got playtime.

For now, we have cardboard between their cages so they can't see one another.  I don't want Apollo to be afraid of Naomi and have that set back her healing.  When either of them are out, we wrap a cardboard barrier around the front of the others' cage so there's no possibility of interaction.

We're not sure what precisely set Naomi off and it may be a few different things, not the least of which being that the living room is not neutral territory, possible jealousy, or Apollo is starting to grow up and hormone production may have Naomi seeing her as an adult female in her territory instead of the baby bunny we humans see her as.  We'll be keeping them completely separate until after Apollo can be spayed and heal up from it, which will be a couple months from now.  We'll re-assess the possibility of bonding them then.  

Zoom-zoom!

Naomi has reached Mach Bun!

Thanks for visiting the blog and we hope you all have a great weekend! Stay safe out there and we'll be back with more bunny cuteness on Monday.

One small hop for bun, one giant leap for bunkind.

Apollo looks like she can't believe that actually worked!

Our little explorer was having a bit of buyer's remorse once she realized how 'up' she was.  Apollo was perfectly fine with me scooping her up and acting as her couch escape vehicle so she could land safely on terra firma.  I'm sure it won't be long before our baby couch bun is up there again!

Who's a pretty girl?

Apollo is!

Truly, 2026 is a year of surprises for us.  Here's how this tale unfolded:

I discovered a tick on the back of Apollo's ear late Saturday evening, which caused us a mini-freakout and me learning how to remove a tick with a beveled notch cut into a conveniently expired credit card.  I managed to get the body out without squishing it and as it turns out, the head minus a bit of mouth parts still embedded in the skin, which I couldn't for the life of me get out with the tweezers we had on hand.  I dabbed it with rubbing alcohol to sterilize the area, dropped the tick into a vial of rubbing alcohol to kill it and save for testing, then set to doing a stupid amount of research on ticks.

The research lead me to spending 2 hours on Monday morning calling every exotics vet not already on my short go-to list in a 2 hour drive radius trying to find someone who would see Apollo for a tick bite.  There are way too many 'exotics' vets who don't update their websites to indicate that they no longer have an exotics vet on staff.  Also too many that are fully booked and it would take over a week to get an appointment emergency or no.  Finally, I managed to get Apollo seen at 11am on Tuesday!

Apollo, Mr. Giraffe, and I headed out in the rain to the vet's Tuesday morning.  The entire vet staff was completely wrapped around Apollo's tiny paw in record time!  The little munchkin clocks in at 1.8 pounds, got a check-up (teeth, heart/lungs, tummy are all good), had a fecal exam and Gram stain done (no parasites found and the slide looked normal), got a dose of ivermectin under the scruff to take care of any potential other ticks as well as mites and parasites, got the first dose of the RHDV2 vaccine, got the tick mouth parts removed, and a quick gender check for later spay/neuter surgery scheduling revealed that Apollo was a little girl.  The exotics vet said that so long as she doesn't develop any symptoms by the weekend, we should be in the clear (they really don't want to use antibiotics unless absolutely necessary due to the harm it could cause her gut flora).

She was a very brave little munchkin and we decided that we're going to keep her name Apollo because she's already answering to it and the name suits her.

Apollo being a female will make bonding with Naomi more difficult, but not impossible.  We're going to take the bonding even slower now and see how things go.  Either way, we're going to have two chaos buns in the house!

Just a bun havin' fun!

Naomi has discovered the soccer ball and is having a blast rolling it around the living room!

Baby bunny zoomies!

We're pretty sure Apollo is the first baby bun to reach ludicrous speed.