Rescued young ones.............

Saturday, October the 2nd was a gorgeous day weather-wise and Veronica was not the only bunny  to get to be featured in "film". The first video is of the brother of "Fast Eddie", these 2 brothers were born at Heartland Rabbit Rescue after their mother was found running through a neighborhood in Edmond, OK.

This video has only about 30 seconds of footage but enough to allow you to see that the "baby" has grown into a very good-looking youngster. They are bunny "adolescents" now and anytime they are allowed running free privileges inside the warren you can be sure they elicit upset and irritation from everyone they get near (sound familiar?).

It is remarkable how most (if not all) of us mammals follow the same trajectory of development and decline. Young...increasing physical abilities, need lots of care and attention, adolescent...can look out for self but reckless and irritating, adult....fending for self (mostly), healthy, elderly....decreasing physical abilities, increasing needs for care.

This dependent, independent, dependent path is followed by human animals, rabbit animals, dog animals, cat animals, rat animals, ad infinitum. We all start out relatively helpless and dependent, then proceed to relative independence and.....if we are lucky to live that long.....begin a period of decreasing physical abilities and waning independence. For those of you that continue to cling to the delusion that we humans are not animals, well........

Here is a brief view of a bunny version of a middle school kiddo.

The next video is of Gwendolyn. Gwendolyn was running the streets of Noble, OK when she was about 7 weeks old. She was emaciated and in poor shape. Luckily for her she ended up at Heartland instead of being a predator's meal.

Gwendolyn is a real sweetie, she is very social and often seeks out strokes and petting from humans that happen to be around. She knows that humans call her Gwendolyn and will respond to that name. In the video we can see her finding some tasty bits by digging in the earth and....using her special ears and eyes to listen and watch for danger.

Gwendolyn belongs to a group of animal people that do not attack or hurt other animal people for food. She is a vegan, a live and let live individual, a prey animal, unlike the more usual companion animals cats (obligate carnivore) and dogs (omnivore)....who are both predator and prey animals.

Gwendolyn has a different approach to life.....she is quiet for the most part and rarely vocalizes (the better to avoid drawing attention to herself), she (along with all bunnies) has very little odor......if you sniff a healthy bunny what you get is a very faint smell of fresh bread. At least that's what they smell like to me. Take a good whiff of a dog or a cat and you will likely get a much stronger smell (not a fresh bread smell, for sure)......they do not need to be as invisible to their environment. Cat and dog animals also make lots more noise than do rabbit animals.

Can we generalize? Vegans.....quiet, little odor, live and let live. Predators.....noisy, stinky, hurt others.

Here is Gwendolyn enjoying the outdoors.

 Most of us humans have been exposed to cat and dog animals. A much smaller number of humans have been exposed to rabbit animals (or other non-omnivore or non-carnivore animals).

Rabbit animals and cow animals and horse animals and sheep animals and chicken animals all share an approach to living that can be called vegan. They do not typically use other living (sentient) beings for food or clothing or entertainment, etc. (note: chickens will eat insects, worms and sometimes carrion)

None of the previously named animal people eat sentient beings for food. They do not hunt or stalk or ambush or kill other (sentient) living beings (except accidentally or in self-defense).  Notice what we human animals do with vegan animals.....we exploit them, enslave them, kill them. (Hell, we exploit and kill all other animals, but numerically by far the largest number of our victims are vegan animals)

We tend to ridicule human animals that emulate the vegan animals and try to live a life of not harming others. Readers that practice a vegan lifestyle are familiar with this. Readers that follow other approaches to living almost invariably think (or have thought) vegan folks are extremists, weird, odd or peculiar.

Average folks believe enslaving, exploiting and killing just for convenience, pleasure, entertainment or taste is 'normal'......avoiding harm to others is, well, 'weird'.

Curious, isn't it?