Some of you may know that I feed the local feral cats while I am away. As soon as we arrive they start appearing through the garden hedge and take up residence for the duration of our stay. There are other people staying on site so very amusingly they flit about from garden to garden seeing who has the best fare on offer. At least this means that when we inevitably have to leave they can survive by getting food elsewhere.
One morning as I glanced out through the patio window I saw a grey furry figure sitting just outside in the shade. I thought nothing of it thinking it was one of the regular cats getting out of the hot sun. However something about the shape of this particular cat just didn’t seem right and when I took a closer look to my amazement I saw it wasn’t a cat at all, it was in fact a rabbit!
My first thought was that it must be wild. As there have been fewer people around in general due to the travel restrictions from Coronavirus, there have been more animals coming into people’s gardens as their houses have been left empty and even a couple of snakes have been sighted here in the garden, where we have never seen them before. This said, although I believe there are some wild rabbits up in the mountains, I have never actually seen any and they are certainly not anywhere near as numerous as back in the UK, so the likelihood of the rabbit being wild was not very high.
On observing the rabbit it soon became apparent that it was in fact tame and not wild. It was quite happy and relaxed in the presence of humans and happy to sit on the patio with us in the evenings. Of course I found some salad leaves to feed it and in particular it liked sliced cucumber. I didn’t have any rabbit feed but I had some wild bird seed, which I thought I would try and as the Rabbit was hungry he/she ate quite a bit of this. In the evenings the rabbit would hop off the patio and go for a wander around the garden, but he/she always came back shortly after. He/she never did his/her toilet on the patio and in fact I found some droppings in the garden gravel, so the rabbit definitely appeared to be house trained.
Of course I couldn’t take the rabbit back to the UK with me and I knew that he/she wouldn’t be able to survive on his/her own in the intense heat with very little to eat. Having asked the other people on the development and been told Rabbity, as he/she had become known, didn’t belong to them, I phoned around a couple of my friends who are involved in animal rescues out here, in the hope that someone could find Rabbity a home. Although they mainly deal with dogs and cats, there was always a possibility that some kind person could be found to take little Rabbity on.
To my delight and utter surprise my friend Suzan called me back within a few hours to say if I could catch the rabbit and take him/her to Petline veterinary clinic, one of the vets there would give him/her a home. Luckily this particular lady vet kept rabbits herself so was happy to take our Rabbity on. So Rabbity would be going to an experienced and caring home.
We all decided that seeing a hire car parked outside, someone had dumped Rabbity in our garden, as it was just too much of a coincidence that Rabbity would have turned up at our house out of so many other places he/she could have gone.
I found a large cardboard box punched a few holes in it and put a nice tasty lettuce leaf inside. Then we corralled Rabbity behind the sofa using some sun lounger cushions. I wasn’t sure if Rabbity would scratch and bite but in the event he/she was very tame and I managed to pick him/her up in a towel.
Next we drove off to the vets with Rabbity in the box on my lap and handed him/her over to his/her new home. It was a very happy ending for a very lucky rabbit.