Hello, friend!

Welcome to my blog. I have posted some photos of my life to share with you. It's a simple little life, but I'm a simple little girl. Please enjoy, and feel free to leave comments
if you'd like.

Yours,
H.R.H. Carlotta

Sunday, December 16

I'm never getting sick again in this town.


Don't procrastinate. That's one lesson we just learned. As in, don't procrastinate in finding a veterinarian when you move to a new town. Cuz if you do, six months will go by (oh my god, we've been here six months already??) and all will be fine. Then all of a sudden it's Friday and there's a sick bunny in the house and there isn't a vet within 30 miles who can see her. And she is dependent on public transportation (*see Daily Commute for the treat that that is) to get her to someone, anyone, who can help.

The other thing we learned is that if you are a bunny and you want to get sick, you should do it in Santa Barbara. You know, the beach town where a vet takes a gentle and holistic approach to bun recovery. Unlike, say, a newly minted vet from Cornell who knows all the latest and most aggressive treatments and wants to use every single one of them on the sick and helpless bunny.

I learned these things the hard way. Friday morning I decided that, seeing as it was going to be the weekend, it would be a good time to eat something that would block my intestines and put me within 24 hours of a painful and frighteningly quick death. Go figure. Anyhoo, I get sick. My mother gets all worried, as she is wont to do (hard to imagine, i know; she's so un-neurotic), and has to go to work, but is on the verge of tears all morning. Calling around to find someone who can see me. Telling her sound-alike boss that she needs to leave early to get me taken care of. Stressing out about how to get to a vet, any vet, as there is only ONE in the entire district who cares for rabbits (we're going to do something about that, btw) and that person has kindly and wisely chosen to take off from work until December 26th. By which time I will have been dead approximately 12 days.

So the aforementioned calm and collected mother comes home early from work. She desperately wants to open the front door, step in, and see that it was all a big misunderstanding and that I am actually fine, just hanging out doing my bunny thing. Wrong. I'm sick. I mean, sick. And hurting. With a belly that is killing me. So she tearfully (okay, sobbingly) makes one phone call after another, and finally secures a 3:30 appointment. Problem is, it's already after 2:00. Oh yeah, and the vet is in Vienna, Virginia. That's about 1/2 hour away...DRIVING. We have to move fast, cuz we're public transpo-ing it.

We rush out the door, headed for the nearest cab that can take us to the nearest train that can take us to the Vienna station and then to the nearest cab that can get us from the station to the vet. Oh yeah, animals aren't allowed on the train, either. And a pet carrier is pretty hard to miss. So I get stuffed in my carrier and it, in turn, gets stuffed in a big BAG, like that's gonna disguise me. ('Course, it actually works, and I go undetected...except by one teenage girl who is smitten with my cuteness and tiny-ness.) Anyway, we get out the front door and, wonder of wonders, there's a neighbor outside his house across the street and he wants to come say hi to the bunny that he has heard about but not seen. We've never met him, although we have heard about him. Well, if that nice man didn't give us a ride to the train station, which was ten minutes away in traffic. (Thanks, Joe.) "You won't make it by 3:30," he says. But we're gonna try. I've GOT to be seen today.

So we get to the train station. But Dummy, I mean Mummy, is so nervous that she immediately plops down on a bench waiting for the train. At the wrong platform. So that's another ten minutes wasted, while she sits trying to keep my carrier disguised in the bag and wishing the train would hurry up. Finally she realizes her error and goes bounding down the platform, down the escalator and gets in line for the correct train. Which finally comes. And it's packed. Rush hour starts earlier than I thought. So we spend the next 20 minutes smooshed up in a corner as the train makes one stop, then another, then another...Vienna is far away. And the noise and motion of the train are altogether new and scary to me. It's not a fun ride.

At last, we get to Vienna. We don't even want to know what time it is by now, so we don't ask. Cuz we're gettin seen, no matter how late we are. We look for a cab. Where are they?? This ain't DC, where you can't go 1/2 block without ten cabs honking at you offering a ride. We ask a man at the counter. "Go to the right," he says. So we go the right. No cabs. We ask a woman sitting at a bus stop. "I'm new in town," she says, "Maybe try going to the left." So we compromise and go straight ahead. There's a cab! TWO!! Finally, we'll be on our way to the vet. But turns out these two chumps don't want to take us cuz we're not going far enough and it ain't worth their while. I swear. Dummy/Mummy, who is (I'm sure you'll recall), polite to a fault, yells at the second cab driver and slams the door on him as he's in mid-sentence. She managed to refrain from cussing at him, though, so that's pretty good.

To make a long story even longer, we finally find a nice cab driver who will drive us to the vet. We're 30 minutes late. (Actually, not bad, considering!). We wait. And wait some more. At last, the young vet who looks like he's about 18 comes to get us. He's pretty nice. But Doogie Howser knows all the latest and he wants to do it all. And Dummy/Mummy is so grateful that we're actually there that she doesn't question any of it.

I am examined. I get weighed. Despite the fact that I now eat enough for a rabbit ten times my size (I'm always hungry!), I'm actually a little lighter than when we got here in May. I tip the scales at 2lbs, 3oz. But that's beside the point. I'm here cuz I'm sick. My tummy is bloated and hard, the vet says. He wants to know if there is an underlying cause (although Dummy/Mummy is pretty sure I just ate some carpet fiber or something like that). So I get blood drawn. And I bleed. And bleed some more. Finally I get a blue "boo boo bandage" (that's actually what they called it!) and the bleeding stops. He wants to keep me overnight with an i.v. to rehydrate me, give me pain medication, monitor me. Nope, I'm going home with D/M. She doesn't want to leave me there. So she gets a quick lesson in how to hook up an i.v., how to stick the i.v. needle in me, how to give me shots of pain medication, and on and on. (Did I mention that she's squeamish?)

After an hour there, we are finally on our way out. We call the same cab driver. He tells us to wait a while. We wait another 45 minutes for him. He gets us to the train. Which, thankfully this time is NOT packed. We sit and calm ourselves. Instead of getting off at the most sensible stop, we switch trains and go to another station. Cuz it has a liquor store. And Mummy needs a drink. Which she gets. We get a cab and we get home. Five hours after first meeting Joe on the street. What an ordeal!

D/M gives me the i.v. (although it sickens her to stick the needle in me). I don't care for it at all. We do the medication thing. I run off to hide so she can't get her hands on me again. At this point I don't trust her at all.

The good news is, I get better FAST. By Saturday night I am feeling frisky and bright-eyed and hungry. So I eat and eat and eat...and poop and pee and poop and pee...and all's well that ends well.

Check out the pharmaceutical stash we now have! Good thing it's all good for a while, so next time I decide to eat the carpet (which I passed, by the way... thought you'd want to know), we can save ourselves the three cabs and three trains and the lift from Joe, and stay home and get better. Faster. And next time we're rehydrating the Santa Barbara way...with carrot juice.

Makes you wonder how such a tiny thing can be so resilient, don't it? They don't call me the Princess for nothin.














I hid under the bed to get away from all that crap. Scared me! I like it better here in the dark.

I need a nap.




All that foolishness wore me out.

Ever seen a bunny yawn?

Now you have.