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.
