Rabbits & Turtles

By the time this posts (as you may or may not know, I write some blog posts and post-date them so I don't have a super super ginormous blog post one day, covering 60 different topics, and then nothing for two weeks), our last adoptable rabbit will be in his new home.

He will be the last rabbit that we take in, except for possibly (and that's a very iffy possibly) special circumstances.

See, here's the thing.  Years ago, we took in a bit more of everything.  We still do, but within reason.  You see how we often have guinea pigs and right now, a bearded dragon, crested geckos, etc etc etc.  But before... we used to get so many "other animals" in, I couldn't focus on chinchillas, and at the end of the day, this is a chinchilla rescue, primarily.  When I say that we had so many other animals... we once had 40 adult rats in, all at the same time.  We once had in the 20's for guinea pigs.  Of course, I'm happy to take in other animals... but they just can't take over.

In the past few years, I've limited the other animals that come in.  Not that I won't allow them to come in, but if someone calls with 40 rats, I try to pass that off to a rat rescue, instead of taking them on.  After all, they are better equipped to handle that many of that sort of critter, versus where I would be better equipped to handle 40 chinchillas.

When we did have the higher numbers of the other animals, we got a lot of calls that asked, hey, do you have this, or that?  Some of those calls were asking about rabbits, so when we did have them in, they got adopted within a reasonable amount of time.  Also, before the last 4 years that I've lived here in Hammond, all the other places that the rescue was at, we were allowed rabbits.  I moved to Hammond, and some concerned soul called animal control and reported that I had rabbits (which are illegal in Hammond), because they were apparently bothering someone or something, and they all had to go to foster homes.  You may recall, one of our less adoptable buns actually went to Red Door in Chicago, which adopts out a ton of rabbits.  The rest were adopted out from our foster homes.

However, while foster homes can definitely be a good thing, what they typically don't provide is exposure.  I have one foster home (out of... 4-5?) that will occasionally post pics of their foster animals on facebook, but usually, the foster homes send me a few pics when I ask for them, and if someone doesn't just happen to run across the animals' ad, no one physically sees them.  This isn't the worst thing ever for the chins, since people are coming here for the chins anyway, and may peruse the website, and decide they like one that's in a foster home.  But now, with less of the "other animals," those calls asking about if we have rabbits (or other critters) have died down considerably, and with the rabbits not physically here for people to see, say "oh how cute!" and think about adopting... they're not getting attention and not getting adopted the way they should be.

The most recent rabbit... we got in him and his littermates at 14 weeks old.  14 of them.  They were all adopted out by the time they were 4-5 months old, if I recall correctly.  Three of them went together, a red male and two white w/ red spots males.  A few months later, that home was unable to keep them, and returned them.  The two white w/ red spots males were adopted out together, shortly after, but the red male is the one that, as of the time I am writing this, is still at the rescue, hopefully to be adopted later this week.  He is now over a year and a half old.  Yes, he's in a foster home, so he probably has no idea that he's in a rescue.  However... with the exception of the time of his life before we got him in, initially... he's spent most of his life with us.  To me... that's not fair to him.  At some of these other rescues that focus more on rabbits, they can get their buns adopted much quicker than we can here.

So, in thinking of the buns and putting their welfare first... we will not be taking them in, absent super special circumstances.

On a related, but side-note... I have learned that turtles are illegal in Hammond as well.  While we've only ever had one turtle at the rescue (and he was fostered, so probably no one except myself and the foster knew he was here... and the foster adopted the turtle)... we will unfortunately not have others, due to many of the same factors as the rabbits (not able to have them here, etc etc).