(Updated on February 2, 2007 -- Maggie's 13th Birthday!)
Maggie's story is a sad one, but with a happy ending. She was one of 1994's
thousands of abandoned Easter Bunnies. But she was one of the lucky ones
who was found by caring (read: sucker) humans instead of a dog, cat or
other predator. On April 14, 2004, my running buddy Paul called up early
in the morning.
Paul (with thick Brooklyn accent): "Hey, there's a rabbit out by my trash cans."
And there we found her. A little Siamese-colored bunny, probably no more
than 10 weeks old. She was sitting primly between the trash cans, flies
insulting her from every direction. It was as if she'd placed herself
there to be taken away with the trash.
I lifted her up, felt her hot, emaciated, wet little body go still in my
hands. I flipped her over, and--no surprise--found a seething mass of
maggots entrenched in a golfball-sized pocket on the inside of her
thigh, and all around her genitals. Her whole back end was damp and
smelled of urine. Whoever had had her before had probably kept her in
such a small cage that she couldn't even get away from her own waste, and
had to sit in it until it burned down to her skin.
We brought her home and started washing, pouring straight Betadine into the
pocket of maggots. They fled! We spent an hour picking them out, and
finally had them gone. We were able to find a vet open that day (a
Sunday), and when he took a look at her he recommended euthanasia, saying
she'd need extensive reconstructive surgery.
I looked at her little pointy face and couldn't agree. I wanted to give
her a chance.
So home she came. We gave her another once-over. All the fur from her
ribcage to the tip of her tail had sloughed off when we bathed her, and
her body was a naked, angry red, raw and pathetic. tipped with a little
pink rat tail. But she was clean. We
set up a hospital for her in the guest bath, complete with a salad and
pellets and soft bedding. When Kevin gently put her down, she was still a
few inches above the salad when she LUNGED for it, her mouth suddenly the
biggest thing on her head. BANANA!!!!
We knew at that moment that she would survive.
The maggots we evicted from her wounds became her namesake. She never
quite forgave us for that.
Against all odds, she became a strapping beauty with
an IQ of about
650. She was a little cuddle bun for the first six months or so,
but one day while she was up on the bed nuzzling Kevin her brain was hit
by a wayward neutrino and she had an I.P.C. (Instantaneous Personality
Change) event: she reached up and took a big chunk out of Kevin's lip!
Things were never quite the same.
From that day forward, approaching Maggie without snake boots on was an exercise in courage
(stupidity?). If I was on the couch in the living room doing something as
innocuous (I thought) as brushing my hair, she might hear a strand break
from a follicle with an offensive note and come charging out of the bedroom,
leap through the air (and you thought that Monty Python scene was humorous
fantasy), latch onto the flesh of my arm and not let go even if she was
hanging three feet off the ground.
One day she bit so artfully into a Main Cable in my wrist that I couldn't
stop the bleeding. As I applied pressure, I imagined punching Kevin's
work phone numbers with my elbow..."Uh....do you think you could come
home? I don't think I can drive myself to the emergency room without
exsanguinating."
Fortunately, it finally did stop on its own, though it opened up several
times during the day, grossing out my co-workers.
And then there was the time I lay peacefully in that half-conscious state
before waking...feeling a presence. A very close by,
malevolent presence.
It had...whiskers.
I opened my eyes.
Not one inch from my nose was...MAGGIE'S NOSE.
Her nose vanished upward, to be replaced by the dark red inside of her mouth,
gated above and below with stilleto fangs...and....
Me: "A rabbit."
Paul: "Yeah. It's just sitting there."
Me: "Does it seem healthy?"
Paul: "I dunno. It's just kind of sitting there. There's a lot of flies
buzzing around it, though."
Me: " *glurk* I'll be right over."
...but she was gone, silent as a panther, leaving only a shallow, bloody chevron on my nose that took weeks to fade.
Surgical precision, has Maggie.
Of course, Maggie didn't treat everyone that way. Mostly me. And
she has known true love.
Maggie's first and perhaps greatest love was Gryphon the
Mighty, and later, Duncan the
Mild. Others were barely
tolerated, or ferociously attacked.
When Gryphon left her to run with the Black Rabbit's Owsla, Maggie
would probably have died of grief had it not been for rakish Hamish, an
Archangel sent by Gryphon to comfort his little, dark bride. We thought no one could
ever fill Gryphon's bunny slippers, but Hamish is a charmer
who won Maggie's heart with his sweet, buzzing song and strong, gentle
manner. He became her strength and
moral support when she lost her right eye to a retrobulbar abscess that
took four agonizing months to cure. But she overcame even that. We
thinks a little, black eyepatch would fit her image quite well, and make
her the hit of the party on
Talk Like a Pirate Day.
But Paradise never seems to last forever.
When we moved from a 1500 square foot condo to our 2600 square foot house
with about an acre of yard, we figured we'd let things sort themselves
out. Down came the bunny gates, and it was every Bun for Him or Herself.
There was more than a little bit of hanky-panky. Two incidents of
wife-swapping (that later reversed). But for poor Maggie, it was the new
rivalry for Hamish's affections from that big, blonde hussy Jessica.
We knew Jess sort of had the hots for Haeme back in the ol' condo. But
in the new arrangement, she completely threw over her old love, Wolf
(Don't worry about Wolf; he
adjusted quickly to become a Happy Camper in
the Space Alien
Clan) to win Hamish. So for a while, Jess and Maggie shared Hamish
half-time.
Maggie did outlive Jessica, who passed quietly in her sleep at the age of
nine. Only the Good die Young. And so Maggie has Hamish all to herself,
once more.
Maggie's been through everything. Start with being abandoned in that
condition.
Add the loss (!) of an eye to a ferocious, fingered retrobulbar abscess
(ah, the days before bicillin. Though we suspect some demons came out with
the pus, because she started to calm down a little bit after that abscess
was gone. Go figure!)
Mix in three surgeries to remove a recurrent
cancer that appeared at her maggot injury site when she was about eight. (And leave it to Maggie
to get a type of cancer that ordinarily occurs only in young human
children.) She finally scared that away, too.
In 2001, she and Hamish both gradually lost the use of their hind limbs
and then their front legs. Both tested negative for E. cuniculi, but we treated them both with
a course of fenbendazole, anyway.
(We have a terrible suspicion that both may have picked up tapeworm larvae
on an outdoor romp, since we do have wild raccoons and other critters
around. But it's not easy to diagnose cysticercosis without a post mortem,
and we're in no hurry for that.)
But in spite of all that, today Maggie celebrates her THIRTEENTH birthday. She's too mean to let anything
like cancer or maggots or infections rob her of life! And though she
spends most of her time sleeping on her comfy bed with fluffy Hamish and
her little caretaker, Peace, she'll happily wake up long enough to be
washed and massaged and bathed by Kevin every morning, given her Critical
Care and Novasource milk shake for breakfast.
And...(shhh!)...don't tell anyone. But a few nights a week, she gets a
little tiny cuplet of
BEER.
Not just any beer, mind you. She gets only the finest microbrews.
Her current favorites are Schneider Aventinus Weissbier and the oh-so-fine Dogfish
Head 60 minute India Pale Ale. We figure at her age and with all she's been
through, there are worse ways to go than Death by Beer. And she
does have gourmet tastes.
So join us in celebrating a True Original. Huzzah to Maggie the
Klingon! Long may she Shave (our skin)!
Return to Dana
and Kevin's House of Rabbit. (in desperate need of an update)
Yow!! Maggie, what are you doing back there?!
Send Maggie fan mail to Dana and
Kevin