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!
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!
So far so good with the slow bonding. If things go well today, we may try a short face-to-face encounter on neutral ground this weekend (Apollo will be 10 weeks old then). At that point, they'll have been in side-by-side enclosures for almost a week.
Apollo is eating well and slowly learning not to stand in his water dish. He is not a fan of the litter scoop and has tried to pick a fight with it when I remove the wet bedding from around his water dish. That is his wet bedding, and it's just the way he likes it!
They both make it a point to binky in front of the other's cage when it's their turn for playtime (usually the other is oblivious to their antics because they're either eating or flopped). They also mimic one another with eating hay and cleaning, so they're getting a bit more synchronized.
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.
In other news, the little munchkin is doing really well with the whole litter box training thing!
