Remembering Bubba

When I started Flickr a Day one year ago, I envisioned a photographic storytelling project, That was 2015. For 2016, I shift storytelling to broader venues but can’t promise daily delivery. Our first installment time travels 10 years to June 2006, when our family inherited lost baby bunny Bubba.

While walking our Kensington, Md. neighborhood on the evening of the third, we came across a couple clasping a tiny rabbit; their cat caught the bunny a day earlier. They desperately sought someone to care for the animal. As house-rabbit owners, we obliged, with the intention of taking Bubba to a wildlife rescue center the next day. He didn’t live long enough to be rescued, 

That June 2006 weekend, Christine Montuori, who founded the Second Chance Wildlife Center in 1986, gave me valuable advice about caring for Bubba and likely cause for its passing away:

The biggest danger is infection from the cat; even if you do not see a wound, it takes only the tiniest scratch or puncture to kill the bunny. Any animal brought to us even suspected of being caught by a cat is put on antibiotics. In my experience, without this treatment, the animal dies within three days. If it has survived longer than that, it has a chance.

The majority of my posts from 2006 are archived from my TypePad blog, and I plan to restore those and others throughout the year. Tonight I republished the three posts about Bubba, which have been offline for at least eight years. I am surprised by how informative they are, by providing useful and still relevant tips for anyone who finds a stray baby bunny (kitten).

If you have any interest in little wild rabbits, please read them:

Sadly, and I can’t recall why, the Bubba photos—shot with Nikon D200—are missing. They aren’t on the LaCie external hard drive where my old photos are stored. Surely others are MIA with them. Fortunately, two of the pics are posted on my dormant SmugMug, which I plan to revive and revamp this year.

I shot the featured image on June 3, 2006, using Nikon D200 and, purchased earlier that day, 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 G ED-IF AF-S VR DX Zoom-Nikkor lens. Vitals: f/4.5, ISO 400, 1/80 sec, 18mm. My daughter Molly holds the little lost bunny.