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!
Oh my God, APOLLO! This explains a lot lol, that level of mischief and shenanigan was more fitting of a girl bunny than a male. Now you have two girlbosses who fear nothing!
ReplyDeleteHi Mónica!
DeleteI know, right?! I'm sure both Apollo and Naomi were thinking, "They just now realized this? Humans are dumb!" XD
Wow what an incredible surprise, and what a rollercoaster it's been, she is such a feisty and playful little bunny and going through all these major life changes without breaking her stride!
ReplyDeleteI'm relieved that Apollo's bill of health came back clean and even though it might be a challenge to bond her to Naomi, with enough time they'll be besties.
Hi Tarosagi!
DeleteIt really has been an eventful year! We're just glad the spunky little munchkin is feeling okay and happily eating her food. Not even a creepy bug-bug will stop her from having fun!
We're having a lot of practice in just rolling with events as they unfold, so we'll just take the bonding slow and wait until after Apollo gets a bit bigger and has been spayed to do a face-to-face introduction to prevent any size intimidation or hormonal concerns. They're both pretty okay with one another with only a couple instances of Naomi's badonkadonk slamming into Apollo's cage and startling her while she was eating and ending in Naomi getting popped in the nose by a tiny paw through the bars of the cage, causing Naomi to get startled back. Overall, they're content to watch one another and mimic each other when it's time to eat hay or clean. :)