This is my post for #freewriters 2878 prompt swearing rabbit hosted by
This is a prompt I am very familiar with. Rudy is a wild rabbit that one of my dogs got out of the nest when he was about a week old. I saw the dog jumping on something in the yard and walked over to it to find two baby rabbits, one was deceased. I took the live one into the house and found a small box and an old shirt for it. I did not know what to do with him. I read everything I could find about baby wild rabbits. They can not have cow's milk, but that is all I had to give him. I watered it down and fed him a small amount to hold him over until I could get to the store, all I had to feed him with was a turkey baster. I bought a can of evaporated goat's milk and he did well on it.
My husband used to vape and had a little bottle that the vaping stuff came in, it had a plastic cap that we cut a hole in, I did not like feeding him with the metal tip. This worked, he was growing.
I tried to give him greens, but he would not touch them. Then, I wondered if he would eat them if I wet them first,he started eating the greens.
Every night I would fix him a dish of greens, and he would eat all of them.
He was growing fast and loved his greens. He was big enough to be released back into the wild. I wanted to do it correctly, so I researched how to do it. Everything I read said you should not release a lone rabbit. I struggled with keeping him in a cage his entire life, but I knew it was the best thing for him.
Rudy was well past big enough to be weaned from his bottle, but I kept him on it for me more than him. I loved holding and feeding him, and how he would snuggle with me after a full belly.
When I weaned him, that's when I started seeing his personality. Then one day, he jumped from my lap, and both dogs went for him. My husband yelled NO to them, and they stopped, but Rudy was on the run. He ran into our room and then into the master bathroom. My husband and I followed and closed the door. We tried to catch him, but he was not having it. We sat on the floor at opposite ends of the bathroom to see if he would come to us, he did. He would run to me and up my arm and back down and then over to my husband, doing the same thing. I finally went to his cage and got his house, and he finally got tired of his game and went into it.
My husband thought we should show him the outside world. I carried him outside and put him in a bottomless cage. He was so scared, and I never did this again.
Rudy is now full grown and knows what he wants, when he wants it, and how he wants it. I usually give him a carrot through the window he chewed in his house. This day, I put a piece of celery there, and he came out of the house mad. (If I do not cut the celery stalk into slices, he will not eat it.) He was making a noise like he was a swearing rabbit, stomping his feet and running to me, then he took his front feet and boxed my hand. Now when he eats all of something he likes, he will take one of the jar caps I use for a food dish and bang it. The problem is, he stays up all night and does this two or three in the morning, bang bang bang, making me a swearing mama.
photos are mine
