TheBanyanTree: Spring Allergies

[Laura]

Bunnies.  I love bunnies.  They make great pets, they are clean, and affectionate, and the 
one I have now is small and cuddly.

I used to have another one, but he was as big a rabbit as I've ever seen, except for the 
Flemish Giant.  The girl at the pet store swore he was a dwarf rabbit.  Uh, no, don't think so.  
He finally topped out about 12 pounds or so.  Definitely an "eater" rabbit.  Still, he was a 
great pet - until I finally figured out the connection between cage cleaning day and a week of 
horrible sickness once a month.  I cleaned his cage every day, rinsed out the food and water 
bowls and refilled them, and scooped his litter box.  Once a week, I'd grab the vacuum and 
stick it in the cage to suck out the worst of the furballs.  Once a month, I'd dismantle the 
cage and give it a proper clean.  Vacuum, wash, rinse, reassemble.  Because of the design 
of the cage, I had to crawl inside it to wipe down the floor and inside of the walls.  Two days 
later, I'd be sick.  Really sick.  It took me months to put the two together.  We had to find 
him a new home.  Well, to be honest, we took him to one of the no-kill shelters, and 
hopefully they found him a new home.

That was several years ago.  Since then the availability of well designed, easy to clean 
rabbit habitats has increased.  I saw one at the pet store that I knew I could clean without 
having to crawl inside.  There is a pull out tray on the bottom, each section has a door that 
opens on the front, the entire lid lifts up, and both floor sections come out for ease of 
cleaning.  Wonderful!  There were two sizes, a large and a small.  The small one fit 
perfectly in my kitchen over the dog crates.  I built a crude table so the bunny hutch wasn't 
sitting directly on the crates, and there is room under the hutch now for boxes of animal 
supplies.  I love it.

The down side to the smaller hutch is that it required us to be absolutely sure the rabbit we 
got would not get any bigger than about 4 pounds.  Impossible to do at a pet store.  Here in 
town, the pet store employees are generally students, most of whom have little or no 
experience with actual animals.

So, I started looking at the local shelters.  Bingo.  One of the shelters had rescued 6 small, 
full grown rabbits from a "bad situation".  I called them, filled out the form, and the whole 
family went to meet two of the bunnies.  We chose a darling little Dutch rabbit.  Best I can 
tell, the "bad situation" must have been a neglect problem, because the bunnies were 
thrilled to have human contact.  They were not afraid of us in the slightest, which made me 
very happy.

They told us the bunny was born last March (ah - an 'easter' bunny.  Selling bunnies at 
Easter should be outlawed.  They usually end up being abused, neglected, or set loose to be 
eaten by neighborhood cats.  <sigh>), so we knew he was full grown.  He was litter box 
trained, and had already been neutered.  The shelter rep said she hadn't actually weighed 
him, but he couldn't be more than 5 pounds.  We could tell he was small enough to have 
plenty of room, even in the small hutch.

When we got him home, we put him in his hutch.  *Plenty* of room!  After he'd had some 
settling down time, I got him out and weighed him - 3 pounds, 6 ounces.  A tiny bunny!  

Even though he is small enough to be comfortable in his hutch most of the time, we got him 
as a pet, not as "cat tv", so he actually spends most of his time in a large pen on the floor, 
playing with us and the cat.  Yes, the cat loves him, and not in the "snack" sense of the 
word.

Yesterday, I noticed that the hutch was past due for it's montly clean.  I got Toki (Korean for 
rabbit) out and put him in his pen.  I asked my oldest son to help me move the hutch out 
onto the deck for cleaning.  I opened the lid on it, and WOW - hair started flying out.  
Apparently it's moulting time!  I ran back into the house to let the wind do it's thing.  An hour 
later or so, I dragged the vacuum out onto the deck and started cleaning the hutch.  It is *so* 
easy to clean!!  In 15 minutes I had the whole thing dumped, cleaned, vacuumed,  wiped 
down, and reassembled, and didn't get a single bunny hair in my eyes, nose, or mouth.

We moved the hutch back inside, and I picked up the bunny to put him in it.  He was 
definitely moulting.  Tufts of fur were sticking out everywhere.  So rather than put him in his 
cage in that condition, I grabbed my grooming bag and took the bunny outside.  I spent 45 
mintues brushing, combing, and plucking that rabbit.  I must have gotten 5 rabbits worth of 
fur off of him!  I had fur up my nose, in my eyes, down my throat, in my ears, down the front 
of my shirt, up the legs of my pants, and in my shoes.  I never saw so much fur come off 
one animal, and the animal still looked fully furred!

I finally quit getting handfuls of fur off of him, so I went in and got a wet wash cloth to wipe 
him down with (you don't bathe rabbits).  He was much happier, at least once I finished 
messing with him, and spent several minutes happily licking every hair back into place after 
I put him back in the pen.

I was not so happy.  I could already feel my eyes stinging, and my sinuses swelling.  I took 
an antihistamine, and hoped for the best.  This morning, my eyes are still burning, stinging, 
and itching, but my sinuses seem to have survived the onslaught.  Fortunately, this moulting 
thing only happens twice a year, so if I'm carefull, it shouldn't be a big problem.  Next time 
I'll remember to take the antihistamine *before* I start in on the grooming.

-- 
Laura (Wolfie)
wolfljsh at gmail.com