How Hayley Stole my Heart
The year we were getting married, I was driving to and from work and noticed a sign that read “Easter Rabbits $10” the week Easter. I rescued her and 6 other siblings from a rural family who raised rabbits for their own dietary consumption. In fact, it was the 10 (12 maybe?) year-old son who grabbed the rabbits for me. At first, I had stopped by the place to make sure the rabbits were being taken care of properly. Can you say “Surprise!” with a shock?
To my horror I saw hutches with warrens of all male, all female, and all young babies. In the hutches, there were bowls that were filled with droppings, and absolutely no water or food to be found. One of the all male hutches had sections, and in one were the baby males, one with a single male with a beautiful thick soft black coat, and one section for the other males. Incidentally, there was another hutch with 2 large albino males who I was told were brothers. When I approached the hutch with the females, all of them ran out as if they were begging for food, water, or me to take them home.
While staring at the hutches, a young boy came out about 10-12 years old with his even younger sister. He casually explained that they were selling the rabbits to help raise money because their pregnant mother was having a difficult time, and their father was just put into jail because he killed someone while driving drunk on alcohol. The rabbits were starting to also get killed by the coyotes in the area, so the family decided that the rabbits would be better off elsewhere. I knew his story probably had some truth to it, but while studying the hutches, the little girl admitted that the dogs next door were taking the rabbits and eating them in the middle of the night. That was when I knew I had to save at least the babies from experiencing any more death. The whole area reeked of it and reminded me of how barbaric people can be.
When I arrived home with all seven baby buns, Rich kind of (okay, maybe he totally did) freak out with how many I saved. After I explained how horrible their living conditions were, Rich said he would let me keep them around as fosterlings until they were adopted. We quickly made use of Jessi’s old baby cage and I placed a large bowl of water for the babies to drink from. Sadly, the little ones drank as if they had never had water for years. They all stayed around that bowl for at least 20 minutes, and probably gorged themselves on hydrating themselves. We made sure they were fed with hay and pellets. At 10PM I reminded Rich to check on the babies before he went to bed and I then trotted upstairs to sleep. When I went to check on the babies in the morning, I found one of the small black-furred ones under his siblings. They seemed not to have a clue that he/she was gone. Somehow, my instinct told me that the baby buns were used to seeing others passing away.
After Caesar and Hayley’s 2 sisters and 2 brothers were adopted, we had this wonderful pair of siblings to entertain us.
