I am about to tell a very long story. Here’s the short version: there were wild rabbits in my house for approximately 24 hours. Three days later, I put on a sweater which was never anywhere near the rabbits and now I have a lone bug bite on my arm. Is it possible that my good deed has been punished with the addition of fleas or am I simply being paranoid?
When I started at my current job, one of my co-workers told us a story abouta wild rabbit who’d been attacked by a neighbors dog – he’d taken the rabbit in, nursed it back to health and was, for the time being, keeping it. A few days after telling this story, he told us all another story – about how his well meaning, two year old daughter took the bunny out of the cage when no one was looking – and how it jumped out of her hands. In her effort to catch it, she landed on it and killed it instantly. Keep that story in mind when I tell you that, two months ago, his neighbor brought two yard bunnies to his front door in tears. Her dog had gotten into their nest during mom’s nightly feeding – killed mom and wounded one of the babies. He took them in and nursed them back to health – again – with lots of KMR and attention and, when the time came to put them on solid food (and his daughter learned how to open the binder clips he was using to ‘lock’ the cage) he asked if I would be interested in taking them in because we have a rabbit.
I agreed immediately, figuring that my house was better than their house since no one here will induce any crush injuries, but when I looked online to learn a little about the differences between your average domestic rabbit and a wild rabbit, it quickly became clear that I couldn’t keep them, so I made a few phone calls to a ‘local’ (if two hours away can really be considered local) wildlife rehab facility who agreed to take them in and get them ready for re-release. To avoid being one of those preachy animal people who ended up making someone who took exceptional care of two rabbits that had the odds stacked against them feel like a bad person, I decided lying was best. We picked them up Wednesday night after work and dropped them off at the rehab facility less than twenty four hours later. (The lie we settled on, btws, was that we took them into the vet…well, today, as it were, to get checked over and make sure they didn’t have mites or worms or anything else weird that they could pass on to our rabbit and the vet explained that wild rabbits shouldn’t be kept as pets so I reluctantly took them to the wildlife people and then there were puppies and rainbows and chocolate chip cookies.)
When I asked if he thought they might have fleas, just as a cautionary question – he said he wasn’t sure – but that his dog hadn’t picked any up while they (the rabbits) were with them, so he doubted it. Nevertheless, while they were with us, they stayed in a (massive) cardboard moving box, lined with plastic – then with fleece. They stayed upstairs – away from our rabbit (though, that was more a “safety and sanity” question than an issue of infestation. They arrived at 7 on a Wednesday, left less than 24 hours later Thursday and by Friday at noon, the blankets were washed, the box, the plastic, the hay, etc… were out in the dumpster. Still, tonight, I grabbed a sweater that had been laying over a chair downstairs, threw it on and, a few hours later, noticed a bite on my arm. In the spirit of honesty, I am a severe allergy sufferer, to be exact – a mosquito bite on my hand will immobilize my fingers – so I have visible reactions to any bite and we do currently have two houseflies attempting to drive me out of my mind – but, it’s well past mosquito weather in the Chicago area and I can’t remember the last time I had an unexplained bug bite. My allergies being as they are, this is the first time i’ve pets large enough to get fleas – so I have no frame of reference on how easy it is for them to take hold.
Could we have gotten fleas that quickly or am I just being paranoid?
My appologies for the lengthy post – but we live in an apartment with lots of carpet, lots of clothes, lots of bedding and a pet of our own. I would rather not endure what I assume must be the horror of a full on flea infestation – anything I can do to nip things in the bud, as they say, I’m willing to do. As a matter of fact, I’m kicking myself for not surrounding that box with flea collars or powder or whatever it is you use to treat fleas in the first place BEFORE we brought the rabbits home.
(Anyone willing to tell me I’m paranoid would be most welcome – in fact, if everyone could reply that I took all reasonable precautions and to relax, that would really make my day. )