high & low of the week.

It happened last Thursday. AJ & I added a member to our family! It was the highlight of our week & I couldn't wait to tell the world! Then he was taken from us... & I cried until my house was totally clean. Here's the story.

It was a usual day of work & school for us. I was on my way to get AJ from school & I had 10 min. to drop him off at home before I ran over to a girls camp meeting. As we're pulling away from the curb, I notice a cat chasing a small critter across the street in front of us. I looked closer and realized that the cat was chasing a bunny! The cat chased the bunny under a parked car and they were both hangin out under it. So of course I had to pull over and make sure that cat wasn't eating it, because that is just not okay! AJ and I jumped out of the car and ran over to take a look under the parked car. There to my amazement was a full grown cat teasing a baby bunny!!

So you can bet your bottom I threw some rocks at that cat to get him outta there! No cat is gonna tease my baby bunny! We got rid of that problem. But the next problem was getting the little bunny out from under the car. It took us awhile, but after about 15 min. and after a small crowd had gathered, AJ motivated the little guy to move a litter closer to me and then I grabbed it.

It was a [miracle] I tell ya! A miracle!! There was no way we could've left him there. That dang cat would've come back as soon as we left. So I snuggled him up in my jacket and we took him home.

Ignore my totally gross "I just got home from a hard day at work as a nanny" face... the bunny is what matters most! We got him a little box with some towels and got to work on naming the little fella. At this point, we had every intention of keeping him (I looked it up online and that's how I know it's a "him"). We thought of Louvre, Amboise and a bunch of other French names... but finally landed on Bolt. This little bunny bolted away from that cat and because of his courage, he is alive. So we will now refer to him as Bolt.

After some research, we discovered that Bolt was not a bunny, he was a Jack Rabbit. Haha so that somewhat changed things! He couldn't properly hop or walk because his feet were so big. It was adorable! He was very nervous at first, but warmed up after an hour or so.

Well we did LOTS of research on jack rabbits and quickly discovered that keeping and trying to raise a baby jack rabbit often turns out to harm the rabbit greatly. Every Internet site we looked at started out by saying "if you've found a baby jack rabbit, return it to where you found it immediately!" And I kept saying "no, no, I will not return Bolt. He is ours and we saved him and he will get killed if we leave him there." Well 10pm rolled around and Bolt hadn't eaten anything or gone to the bathroom (which is very strange for a bunny). So I started to get worried that he was younger than we thought and that he actually still needed his mothers milk. I worried that he would never eat with us and that he would starve to death.

AJ and I spent the next hour saying "should we take him back??" "he's so cute..." "we can't take him back now... we'll take him back in the morning.." "no let's do it!!" "but he's soooo cute...." we did more research and found out that the mother feed the babies between 12-2 am. So if we were going to return him in time to be fed we needed to hurry! So we decided to do it!

We jumped in the car and took him back to the bushes on Stanford campus where we guessed he originated from. As AJ was putting him back (I couldn't because I was crying...) I heard a noise and the cat jumped out and started heading for Bolt. I screamed and AJ grabbed Bolt and held him close! That dang cat was just waiting for him! And that was not okay with us! So we took him back home and snuggled him in his box and we all went to bed for the night.

In the morning, we decided to just keep Bolt and try to raise him at least until he was strong enough to live on his own. But I wanted to take him to the vet just to make sure he was okay and to get some info on what to feed him and such. Well I got there and told the girl our story. And she took Bolt from me and walked away. I looked at her expecting her to come back WITH Bolt and some info on how to care for him. But all I got was "rabbits have a 50/50 chance of living without their mother. If you take care of him, chances are he'll die. So I'll take it from here and keep him in an incubator."

We didn't get to say goodbye to Bolt and that was the last time I saw him. I walked out of the office and cried my whole way home. I had to clean my house to keep my mind off him, but I just kept thinking of how lonely he must be. It was soo hard! We saved him!

The next day AJ and I debated on whether or not to go back to the vet and try and get him back. It was decided that we shouldn't just because it would be too hard to see him again if we can't have him. So if you read this and feel so inclined, we have been praying that Bolt will be okay living at the vet and that he will grow up and be strong enough to survive on his own! With a little faith Bolt will be okay and maybe we'll see him chasing the cat in a couple months:) Serves him right...