🇵🇸Look at my Rabbits

My weird dogs, Spindle (Grey male) and Nima (white stripe plushie thing) and their antics. And myself, a Palestinian immunologist and wildlife rehabilitator. You can call me Meri! feel free to ask me (appropriate) things!

[spindle-and-nima]

Wildlife Rehab Help!

Hello friends!

To those who are new to this blog, welcome, I'm Meri and I am a wildlife rehabber and scientist (immunologist to be specific). I work with eastern cottontails in the state of Michigan as one of only approximately 8 rescuers which means I take care of a LOT of buns.

I work with domestic rabbits and wild ones, and none of this is paid for. This is a privilege and an honor to be able to use my skill to work for something bigger than myself, but it means I rely on donations from finders and followers.

No one is obligated to donate, I will never be the person to push that down anyone's throat, but donations via my amazon link help me keep my supplies stocked and significantly increase my capacity, which means I can save even more bunnies. If you do not wish to donate and simply want to enjoy the silly and fun learning environment I'm working towards, please stay and please do!

My goal is to showcase and standardize domestic and Eastern cottontail rabbit care and as a scientist, my biggest goal is to make information accessible through my posts and keeping my DMs and asks open for all who need it.

If you guys want to be a part of this journey, please check out my amazon registry below to send me supplies directly or donate to my ko-fi!

Wildlife Rehab Supplies | Amazon Gift List

Ko-fi:

Support Meri

Support Meri

Thank you!

[spindle-and-nima]

hows milo today?? any poops at all yet?? been thinking of him all night and morning, little man is in my thoughts and prayers 💜🐇💜

He blew his butt nose again and I saw more mucus. The mucus though seemed greenish brown so im like hmm maybe some fecal matter. Green would freak me out usually because it means bile so a liver issue but we checked that out thoroughly at the ER. So im just hoping it means fecal matter is moving

I gave him meds and more subq just now and hes sulking but ill check on him in a bit to see if hes perked up a bit.

[spindle-and-nima]

When you say you give the bunnies iv fluid, do you give it intravenously? Cause last week i spent like 30 minutes trying to get one (1) blood sample from a chihuahua that i think was larger than your average buns, so if you're regularly sticking the veins of tiny sometimes dehidrated bunnies you are the most impressive person ever

Pic tax either way, this is my baby girl Oreo, she'll be 7 this year, we both appreciate everything you do!

I wish i had that level of technical skill but no i dont do IV on cottontails I just say iv fluid bevause thats more layman than saying LRS.

Tbh trying to hook up an iv line to a cottontail would stress them out so bad that even if I could I wouldnt.

Even at the ER with milo it took like 5 tries to get an iv cath into his Lil leg veins bevause rabbits are just so so hard to stick

[spindle-and-nima]

i got to meet a tenrec today and holy fucking hell

Oh my god??????

[spindle-and-nima]

He ate a very good amount of food and promptly slumped into this position. Not quite tummy pressing but not comfortable enough to sploot. But this is the most comfortable hes looked in a while.

I pet him, told him how brave he is, and now im headed to bed. Ill be up to give him fluids again in 6 hours.

Its so anxiety inducing. On one hand maybe his gut will start working and on the other, who knows how badly things could go? Hes sitting right on that line and its killing me. I just tell myself im doing every possible thing I can and I can make peace with that but how I wish and hope that ill wake up to find stool production. I yearn to just have him get better so I can give him to his mom alive.

[spindle-and-nima]

Every time I get ready to subq this beast he starts eating 😭😭 i dont dare interrupt him since he seriously needs it so ill wait patiently before bothering him with meds

[spindle-and-nima]

What a day...while I was driving to get milo the ER called me telling me they have a domestic bunny who's only 4 months old. He has a broken back leg (spiral fracture) and the owners didnt want to be involved with it so they signed him off to be euthanized.

This was about to be a horrible tragedy. Hes only 4 months old why kill him? The ER ran x rays and covered the cost of that and his meds while I called up the rescue i do groomings for.

They agreed to take him in

Hes the sweetest thing who truly deserves better than what he got. I just dropped him off to the shelter and they have an appointment made for him at a trusted vet tomorrow to amputate his leg.

The good news is one of the techs has a lot of special needs animals and fell in love with this sweet lop so she's first in line to adopt him!

[spindle-and-nima]

Milo is home with me now!

In his hut that his owner gave me, i have a warm heat pad under so he can get the benefit of warmth.

He was able to pass a 3rd mucus glob but still no poop. I gave him subq fluids and his meds and now im letting him decompress

[spindle-and-nima]

hey I've been having a really rough time with my health and especially with being able to sleep lately, but your posting schedule means that even when im having my worst nights i can take a break and see the little bunnies and I can't possibly describe to you how much good that has done me! thank you so much for sharing the little guys with us

Welcome to the No Sleep Club im an unfortunate member too but hey there's bunnies!

Heres some Snoot for Sleep

[spindle-and-nima]

sent some money for Milo, best of luck to you & this sweet baby, i hope he makes a full recovery 💜

You're incredible its so so so appreciated! This ask was from a bit ago I just didn't get the chance to respond fast enough but it makes a huge difference

Im just so grateful and honored to be trusted with Milos care and to have gained rhe support of so many of you to try to save an animal that desperately needed it

[spindle-and-nima]

I got the cutest sweetest newcomer. A bunny found dragging his back legs. Cause unknown.

As soon as i taped his legs up to stabilize them and his spine he just snuggled up to my hand. I scratched his ears and he started tooth purring. I was baffled but he was delighted getting pets. Some of the wild ones are so oddly friendly. He also is a weird case of "can pee and poop but no leg work" so I gotta see whats wrong.

He and Andromeda will go with me to the clinic when i check on milo to get X rays

[spindle-and-nima]

My leg degloving bun is so mischievous. He keeps licking his wound dressing off (taking off the pants as I call it) so I had to go in and redo it, trying to make it less restrictive. This was right before I helped Crash take his meds so I ended up getting a double bunny butt for it

[spindle-and-nima]

Crash is what I named my car accident cottontail

Crash has perked up a bit since getting fluids and meds but as soon as i went to fix his dressings he uh...crashed out. He started freaking out badly until I coukd calm him down

No it wasn't gabapentin that calmed him it was a gross goop of mashed banana, warm water, and critical care. He LOVED it. He wobbled upright immediately and snapped it up so eagerly he was biting the syringe. I got 5 ml of critical care in him which is amazing! The fiber and sugars are going to really help his malnourished body

Good job buddy!

[spindle-and-nima]

Just in case you'd like a bit of cheer: last night I had a dream I was going down a river to a party venue/farm, and the farm was full of fat, large, and very very fluffy rabbits, all looking like Spindle except they were black and white and ginger and white (the one that snuggled up close to me was very ginger). They were very soft and squishy and friendly. Your blog probably had a hand in that dream, so I just wanted to relay to make you smile!

That sounds so nice....

If they were anything like spindle you'd just see a few hundred of this though:

[spindle-and-nima]

sending milo Poop Vibes... i have a question about rabbit poop also, if thats ok? i know that one way you get human babies to poop if theyre having trouble is to put them on their backs and gently stretch their legs up towards their belly, hold for a few seconds, slowly lower them, then repeat. i know rabbits go into a sort of paralysis if you force them on their backs, and are very fragile in the digestive system. my question is, would the baby method work, do you think? obviously the rabbit would probably need to be sedated or super medicated so they dont panic and hurt themselves or go into that shock state, but im just curious if stuff like that would work in theory.

thank you for all the educational work you do on here, and for sharing your cottontail rehab process. its amazing what you do for these little critters. its amazing how youre Also helping this strangers rabbit milo, and its amazing how this rabbit community came together to help him too.

you have a really good heart, as does everyone who donates to you to help the cottontails And to help milo.

So good thinking but different execution is done in bunnies.

So this works in human babies but in a rabbit, their guts are shaped differently and they should be upright. I wouldnt even sedate a rabbit to do this and handling them in stressful holds is also a health risk.

Now the whole stretching legs out and in is a good idea but I do not do that myself. Rather the way to do it in bunnies is literally to force them to walk around and just move, since the movement of the muscle is going to help too

The method used for massages is to put your hands under the bunnys tummy and gently rub small circles, and do small taps (like drumming your fingers) on the belly and sides. Sometimes ill stop and gently lift the bunnys rump and give it a gentle shake up and down for a few seconds then put em down and repeat. This helps move gas

[spindle-and-nima]

We were visited by one of the wild cottontails that lives along our back fence! They made their way out front and clearly taunted my cats (other is perched in a window nearby, also watching)

[spindle-and-nima]

This might be a bit of a graphic question, so feel free to ignore it or DM me an answer if it's too much, but I am curious; how exactly does a degloving incident heal? It sounds like the kind of thing where you'll never really get the limb back to normal after it happens. I'm curious about it but a bit nervous about looking it up online, and I am mostly curious about how well rabbits recover from it anyways.

Thanks in advance, and sorry for the kinda gross question. I think medical stuff is really neat, even if it's morbid at times.

Not morbid at all to me! Its a good question

So essentially unlike humans, rabbits have a gap between the muscle and the skin. Its part of their survival physiology that if they are grabbed by a predator, their skin tears away and let's them escape. Literally like taking a coat off.

So when it rips away, the concerns are heat loss, infection, and fly strike. And it's very painful. The limb itself is sore but still definitely functional if no muscle was torn too. The bun who had the leg degloving is already using his leg more.

It heals. The skin basically grows back from the edges like closing a cut, then fur starts to grow. Fur can def be very patchy and not as smooth as an undamaged coat but it absolutely can grow back. I change dressings every 2-3 days then, when I see the skin is recovered, I stop covering it and keep up with ointment until its well and healed