On stubbornness, needlepoint, and rabbits

In January of 2015 I ordered five Christmas stocking needlepoint kits and started working on them. I was smart. I planned ahead. I would have all of them ready by Christmas that year. I vastly overestimated my needlepoint abilities. We are coming up on Christmas 2016 and I still have two and a half stockings to go. Not that I'm giving up. No, I am stubbornly working away on the stockings with the misguided faith that by some miracle I will finish them this year. In all reality they won't be completed until Christmas eve of 2017 but my only options are to keep working on them or to give up completely and like I said: I'm stubborn. So that's what I've been doing lately. Needlepoint. Which I think must actually be Latin for "lots of work for very little results."

What does this mean for life on the Unfarm? Not much has changed other than that all this time spent in the bunny room, combined with the loss of Jojo, means that Ginger gets to spend the whole day out of her house hanging out in the room with me. She mostly chills in the duck area during the day and spends the evening exploring the room, collecting dust bunnies on her whiskers from the corners and behind the door.

Ginger hangs out on top of one of the art bins.

Ginger nibbling on my pants.

Yet another departure

We lost Jojo yesterday. He hadn't been his usual spunky self for quite a while now and he was getting on in years, being already ten years old. I gave him his medicines in the morning and cleaned the urine off of his bum and was holding him when he started to make little gasping motions with his mouth and a minute or two later he went limp and died in my arms. I am comforted only by the knowledge that he didn't die alone but was with his momma when he went. I hope he is feeling well now and comes back to me soon. I'll be sure to be on the lookout for another spunky little netherland at the shelter in the coming months. Stay tuned.

 

Camping out at the vet...again

It had been a couple of weeks since we've been to the vet's office so naturally it is time to go back. This time it was Axel and Jojo who drew the short straws. It seems no one else wanted to volunteer to go in for some reason.

Axel went in for a bout of diarrhea that lasted three days before we gave up and took him in to see the vet. We brought in a stool sample and he was given some nasty medication to take to help clear up the diarrhea. We had to coat the medication in peanut butter to make sure he would swallow it because it tastes bad and starts to dissolve quickly - I know this from personal experience. I had to take this same medication several years ago and in order to be able to swallow it at all I had to coat each pill in chocolate almond bark so I wouldn't be able to taste it. Gotta give me props for creativity, right? Axel's visit was pretty straight forward: test for parasites and treat for diarrhea.

Jojo's visit was another story. Jojo went into the vet for something that we thought was minor - blocked tear ducts and a disinclination to use his litter box - that turned out to be a bigger problem than we foresaw. His tear ducts are in fact blocked, and he was given eye drops to try and clear that problem up but his reluctance to use the litter box was more than simply wanting to keep me on my toes and make more work for me in an effort to keep his cage clean. It turned out that he had poor control of his hind end which could have been caused by several different things, the first of which was parasitic infection, so we tested for that and it came back positive for E. cuniculi. Enter another medication, stage right. Now, not only is Jojo on eye drops three to four times a day, he is also on oral medication twice a day. 

And they weren't done yet - they wanted x-rays of his back end, so back we went to the vet. The x-rays were taken but the vet advised sending them out to a specialist to look at to see if it could be cancer of the bones that could be causing the rather squabbagy (pronounced skwa-buh-gee, it basically means crooked) look to his spine. It seems the vets are determined to clean out my entire savings account this month. The results are in and they do not think it is cancer (thank goodness), just arthritic changes and an old, healed fracture but they want him on an anti-inflammatory medication and ideally laser treatments twice a week for several weeks at $50 a pop. Someone there must have a child headed off to college that they need me to pay for. We are starting with the anti-inflammatory medication because really, why not add another medication to the already long list of medications the animals need each day? Whoever said that moving to the country and living on a farm was getting back to the simple life was seriously mistaken. Or else I just have rotten luck.

Arrivals and departures on the Unfarm

As it has been some time since I have posted anything (goodbye, resolutions) there has been some small number of arrivals and departures here on the Unfarm. A change of cast, so to speak.

The first to leave was Daphne, the mouse. This left Caroline (being the other mouse) all alone and precipitated the arrival of Evangeline - a small, grey mouse to keep Caroline company, which would have worked well had Caroline not then died soon afterward, leaving Evangeline alone. It would appear that either my timing is perpetually off when it comes to the mice or my luck is just plain lousy. 

Shortly after Caroline died (and was stored in the freezer beside Daphne until they could be taken to be cremated - a fact which my mom forgot until she went rummaging around in the back of the freezer for cheese and was startled (to say the least) by a frozen, Ziploc-ed mouse) Clover, my sweet little rabbit, took a downward turn. It started out with weight loss that had me concerned enough to make a vet appointment but became something closer to panic when he became lethargic one evening a week before his scheduled appointment. I took him into the vet the next morning on an emergency drop off appointment and he remained there on heat lamps throughout the day and went home with me in the evening in less than stable condition, with poor appetite and low body temperature. I was cuddling with him at home that evening when he stretched out and then went limp. Having held enough dying animals (that is a sad statement of my life, is it not?) to know what that meant I pleaded with him not to go but it was useless: he died in my arms. And so we lost Clover - the malnourished stray I had caught in a live trap and nursed back to health six years ago. Perhaps the only positive thing I can say about losing Clover was that at least he was not bonded to any other rabbits that would be left behind; I was in the process of bonding him with Jojo but they were only at the point of tolerating each other when Clover died. 

The benefit to having so many pets is that when you lose one you can't wallow in your misery for long: you have a dozen or so other animals that need you still. Which brings me back to Evangeline, our lone mouse. As it so happens, I was trolling the humane society website (as I often do, looking for some animal or another who seems to desperately need a home like ours) and happened across the profiles of three female mice who were up for adoption. Here was a perfect opportunity to add roommates for Evangeline while supporting a worthy cause. Needless to say Evangeline now has three new mice to socialize with: Angela, Francine, and Gemima.

And so the tally stands at this: departures - 3, arrivals - 4. But knowing life on the Unfarm, those numbers are sure to change again all too soon.

Life on the Unfarm: an illustrated account

 

Pip, taking a nap

Pip again, cuddled with a towel and heating pad

This one is Squeak, she was a little bit older than Pip

Squeak, look how tiny she is!

These are a few photos of Pip and Squeak, honorary Unfarmians who were with us for a short while. They were wild baby cottontail rabbits that the neighbor's cat (Chico, the terror of the neighborhood  I've mentioned before) caught somewhere and brought, still alive, to the neighbor's doorstep. They gave the bunnies to me to take care of but they were very little - Pip didn't even have his eyes open yet - and they both passed away last week. It takes very little time for me to fall in love with an animal and both of these two wriggled their way into my heart in a matter of minutes. Squeak lasted several days but even top notch vet care couldn't save her. I am having them cremated together and the urn will be placed in my room next to all my other children. I fear that by the time I am 80 I will have to add another room to my house simply to store all the urns from my pets. At any rate, I hope you enjoy looking at these two cuties as much as I do.

Interior design on the Unfarm

I generally consider myself to be a fairly decent, if amateur, interior designer. I can organize, tidy and toss furniture around to create something that most people are generally happy with. I am well known for my regular, minor furniture rearrangements - we have a summer look and a winter look for the living room. I am also well know for my major room rearrangements, which may or may not include new furniture, wall colors, and decorative painting. These transformations typically take place when I am left to hold down the fort on my own while the rest of the family is out of town for a few days. If you are a regular reader of this blog you may remember some of those projects. The kitchen, office, and TV/sewing room have been the most recent victims of my I-think-I-can-handle-it-itis. It is a terrible affliction that warps my thinking causing me to actually believe I can pull off a complete redo in only a few days with no help, and not have to spend the last few hours before my parents get home running around the house frantically trying to get paint to dry and clean the disaster zone I have created of the rest of the house. Spoiler: I am never found relaxing with a glass of lemonade or reclined on the couch with a good book when my parents pull up in the driveway. Sweating, breathless, and hiding rags and cleaner behind my back is a more accurate image. It may take a few days for my parents to come around to the new look, but as far as I know, they always do. 

"This placement will do quite nicely. Yes, the chi is good here."

Unfortunately, not everyone has been pleased with my designs. Apparently, my skills as a designer do not translate over for the lagomorph crowd. The rabbits are decidedly unhappy with where I choose to place things. The litter boxes, for instance, are always placed under the water bottles to catch any drips, the carpet is on the opposite side of the cage and the food bowl is in the middle. This is clearly not where things should go, and Ginger makes sure to let me know what she thinks of this arrangement. As soon as I put a fresh litter box in she will grab it with her teeth and hurl it about her cage. This almost always ends up with the hay strewn about all over the cage floor, the litter box on its side in the center, and her food bowl is often dumped out and can be found under one of the mounds of hay. Having done so much work redecorating her house she will then plop down on the cage floor previously occupied by her litter box, stretch her body out and kick her legs to the side. This is Ginger speak for, "I am thoroughly satisfied with how things are."

Ginger playing "king of the mountain" sitting on top of her upside down litter box. She thinks this is the best way to arrange her cage. As you can imagine, I disagree.

My response to her redecorating is to uncover and right her bowl, put her litter box back in its place, scoop up all the hay, and deposit it back into the litter box. The entire time I am doing this Ginger is squeaking and grunting at me and charging at my hand. This is Ginger speak for, "what do you think you're doing?!? I just got that all arranged and now you're messing it up! The feng shui was perfect! How is the chi going to flow in here now??"  I suppose I shall just have to resign myself to the fact that in all likelihood I will never be hired as a professional interior designer for the lagomorph society. I will have to content myself with maneuvering couches and painting walls. Speaking of which, the hall closet really could use a remodel...

The Very Hungry Bunny

I tried - I really tried - to get the front deck looking good this past summer. I spent hours scrubbing the deck and the patio furniture to get all the algae and moss off (in the cool, wet climate of the Pacific northwest it is practically a miracle if a deck doesn't completely biodegrade during the course of the rainy season.) I sadly took apart the extra rabbit cage that was out on the deck - I didn't have any use for it after TJ died. I even planted some herbs in pots (tall ones) on the deck and arranged all the furniture to take advantage of the view. It looked great...for two days. And then Clover discovered it. Clover apparently decided to follow in the grand tradition of all rabbits that have come before him and create mischief wherever he finds himself.

On Monday, Clover chewed off the leaves that he could reach while sitting on the deck. That evening I put up a gate around the plants. On Tuesday, Clover figured out how to move the gate and continued to graze on the herbs. That evening I zip tied the gate to the deck railing to keep it from moving. On Wednesday, Clover discovered that he could squeeze underneath the railing and bypass the gate. He continued to munch on the herbs. On Thursday, Clover bypassed the gate, hopped up into the planters and ate the plants down to the ground. On Friday, with no plants left, Clover dug himself a trench in the largest pot and happily settled down to survey his handiwork.

I think what we had was a basic communication problem. No matter how many different ways I tried to tell Clover that the plants were decoration and not, in fact, food, all he heard was something along the lines of, "I spent an hour planting this salad bar for you Clover, bon appetit." I would have moved him into the backyard run under the grape arbor but he has, unfortunately, also demonstrated a propensity for easily clearing the waist high walls of the run and spending the day hopping merrily about the backyard until we discover him and have to spend the next hour chasing him down. Fortunately I no longer have to worry about him running amok on the deck as it is mid October now and well into the rainy season. I figure I've got at least 8 more months to ponder the problem and come up with a solution for next year.

A loss on the Unfarm

If you are expecting a lighthearted, somewhat humorous report of life on the Unfarm, I am sorry to disappoint - the news today is neither of those things. We have suffered a loss here on the Unfarm yesterday. My little, tiny, baby bunny boy, TJ, went into shock yesterday morning due to a gut upset. (I am quickly coming to face gut problems in rabbits with a knotted stomach and a cold sweat, after having previously lost both Tajha - TJ's mate - and Peter - the Netherland dwarf who lived with us before Jojo and Suki arrived, to gut upsets.) I rushed TJ to the vet where he managed to hang on for most of the day but lost the battle in the early evening and slipped away. All losses of my little ones (we have lost somewhere around twenty pets in my lifetime) are painful but losing TJ was particularly tough because we had become so close in the last few months as I nursed him through a stubborn injury he sustained after a run in with Jojo during an attempt at bonding. TJ and I have been together for at least four years now and he was so tame that I could walk right up to him and pick him up wherever he was - whether inside or out running around the garden. We often cuddled up for naps and he is the only rabbit who I could trust to run free throughout the house as he stayed out of trouble and the dogs seemed to accept him as a sort of honorary dog, knowing somehow that he was not to be chased or otherwise bothered.

The evenings now are the hardest. That is when I miss him the most, during that time when the distractions of the day have begun to melt away and all that is left is an ache and the desire to hold him again, cradling him against my right side with my arm, his feet resting against my hip and his head at shoulder height so that all I needed to do was turn my head to be able to kiss the soft, white fur on his forehead. His departure has left a hole in my life and the rest of the animals on the Unfarm have noticed his vacancy as well.

In a somewhat cruel coincidence, Dora, my sister's hamster, also died yesterday and while Dora was not technically a member of the Unfarm, it is a loss all the same, and deserves to be mentioned to honor her memory.

And now that this loss has been reported, I am signing off. I will try to resume reporting the news from the Unfarm again shortly but I have to be in the right mood and it is not the one I am currently in. Goodnight, all. Love you forever, TJ.

Cross that off the list

It's done! Finally! A picture of every single animal that lives with me here on the Unfarm. Getting the pictures added to this site has been on my to do list for a few months now - I needed to add pictures of Minna and Maggie (now that they are full grown and sporting their adult plumage), as well as Maia, Jojo, Clover, and Mynxy cat. But getting the pictures was - as is customary on the Unfarm - easier said than done.

Minna and Maggie were relatively simple as they tend not to run around as much as the other animals. Not that they can't run - don't ever think that just because they have large feet designed more for swimming than mobility on land that they aren't fast - it is at times hard to outrun Maggie when she (I mean he, but it has become habit to refer to Maggie as a "she") is determined to catch up to me.

As for Mynx, I happened to catch her during a rare moment when she was not sleeping. She did, however, decide to investigate the camera and I was eventually able to get a shot of her whole face, rather than just her nose.

When it came time to get a picture of Miss Maia it took considerably longer than I had originally thought that it would as Maia was convinced I was about to deliver some cruel treatment of some kind. As a result, although she did as I asked and sat on the couch, she spent the entire time trying to avoid looking at me while trembling throughout her entire body. It may have had something to do with the fact that I often corner her on the couch or chair when it is time to clip her nails - something she (well, all the dogs actually) abhor. To be fair, I try to be as careful as possible when clipping their nails, but both Kita and Maia have black nails and sometimes accidents happen and I nick the quick.

The most difficult photos to get were the pictures of Clover and Jojo. The rabbits, while they do many, many cute things and strike numerous adorable poses, only hold those poses for approximately 2.3 seconds - not quite enough time to get the camera in position and focused. After about 10 minutes or so of taking pictures of Jojo and Clover, I had 5 decent photos to choose from, and 63 photos depicting only a blur of bunny moving across the screen.

But they're here, they're done - uploaded and titled and off of my to-do list - now all I have to do is tackle the other 374 things on my list.