The Night Shift (or: Florence Nightenbun) (or: Pass the Coffee Pronto)

Well, peeps, we are exhausted.

Guess who was up all night with this one?

Yesterday morning after I left for work, G noticed that Lucy was acting strange, like she couldn't get comfortable.  Immediately he knew that something was wrong. 

The thing about rabbits, and I probably mentioned this before with the little old lady Orca, is that any time anything shifts in their behavior or their routine, it is a sign that something is wrong.  Due to a rabbit's small size and high metabolism, things tend to go wrong much more quickly than in bigger animals or in humans.  We might go through a few hours of discomfort before things get real.  For a rabbit (read: and the rabbit's owners) that *&%$ gets real fast.

G spent the entire day in the vet's office yesterday.  They ran a series of tests and did X-rays that showed she had mild GI Stasis - which means something was blocking her digestive system.  Most likely a piece of something from her bag of crap she loves to play with.

They hydrated her and gave her special food - and even did bunny acupuncture, I kid you not - and then sent her home with strict instructions to force feed her throughout the night.  Every hour on the hour.  The rabbit who won't let us touch her, move her, or even come close to picking her up.

That was fun. 

Especially around 3:30 a.m.

Step One: We have to completely dismantle her cage and force her carrier down into it.  Then G has to wrangle her into the carrier.

Step Two: I manhandle her while he force feeds her.  We do this in very small increments so she won't bolt or have some sort of bunny aneurysm.  Because we take so many mini-breaks, it takes us about 15 minutes to feed her.

None of us enjoy this process.

Step Three:  Re-assemble her cage.  Then line up the carrier with her cage door so that she can scramble as soon as it's unzipped.  G will most likely divorce me for posting this pic.  It was taken around 5:30 this morning - I think it was our 8th forced feeding.

Step Four:  Lucy dives into her cage and gives G the look of death from atop her toilet.  Rabbits aren't very dignified.

Then she frams around in her cage while G and I crash in the living room.

An hour later it starts again.

It occurs to me that this is reason #345,987,324 why we don't have children.  Newborns?  Doing this every night?  How is that even possible?

We both had to call in to work this morning because she has to be observed for a few more hours, and I'm trying to drink enough coffee to enable me to go to class and tutoring this afternoon.  This is so coming out of her allowance...

Thank God and the Heavenly Host that tomorrow is Friday.  We are going to sleep all weekend.