Wednesday 28 May 2008

Buster's rescue and recovery

After my colleague found this little leveret sitting still on the road outside work, she picked him up and brought him into the office and we discussed what to do.
We rang a local pet shop looking for advice and we were told to put him back outside.

So we brought him back out and put him near the closest hedgerow to where he was found (when the picture below was taken). We watched him from a distance but he was so small that he could not sit still without stumbling on the grass; it was so cold and he was shaking and it had just started raining.
There were no hares around and we thought he would not survive the cold night away from his nest, so I offered to take him home to keep him warm and bring him back to the same hedgerow in the morning.

Once home, he was kept warm, fell asleep and slept all night.

I did some research in the meantime and discovered that the mothers feed leverets at night, so chances were that the mother would come back for him...

The following morning I brought him back to the same hedgerow. It was lashing rain.
I waited a bit to see what he did, then went into work.
My husband who also works for the same company checked on him while I was in the office. We waited few hours but the leveret was still in the same place in the grass, he did not move back into the cardboard box to seek shelter and did not go under the hedgerows, no signs of the mother and at that stage he was completely drenched under the rain so we decided to bring him back in.

I took a permit from work and went to the pet shop looking for some milk I could feed him with. I was advised to bring him to a vet clinic as they had nothing there to feed the leveret and he needed immediate attention as he was very dehydrated and was gone into a hibernation state. (They said not to get too attached as he might not make it...)

I rushed to a vet who gave me some milk (powder milk for puppies) to feed him with.

I took the leveret back to the office and gave him a big feed..
Slowly, he made it out of the woods.

He's been with us since.

My husband and I have named him Buster.

2 comments:

Ivy said...

I linked to you from Cute Overload. Your rescue of Buster represents everything good and sweet in the world. Yay for Buster having such a loving, caring home. xoxo

Unknown said...

Same here, Ivy; and I agree!

Best. BunBlog. Ever.