Miss Moody (left) and her mate, Popeye

We lost yet another resident today.   For some reason, they tend to go in groups of three.   Today, it was one of our big white New Zealand bunnies.  Miss Moody, so called because sometimes she was your best friend and sometimes she hated the mere thought of your pitiful existence, was suffering from a calcified abscess in her lung.  We don't know how long it's been there, but it must have been a while because she was barely able to breathe.

Unlike cats or dogs, who make it pathetically obvious when something is wrong, rabbits will hide it.   As prey animals, they can't let on that they're injured or (in the wild) they'll be targeted by predators.   This really sucks for people who run rabbit rescues.   Everything will be perfectly fine one day, and the next you have a dead rabbit on your hands that you didn't even know was sick....it's like you never really get a chance to to try and help them.   There are some obvious ailments, like upper respiratory infections for example, that come with sneezing...so we can tell by the sneezing that there's something wrong.   But unless you're really paying attention (and know what to look for), you may be completely blindsided.

With Marley, I had a feeling something was off....I could tell by the way he was acting that something wasn't right.    With Moody....I had no idea she was secretly suffering.  It's so hard when you think "if we knew, we could have helped her."   But like I always say: You can't save them all.