There are few things in this world more terrifying than fucking up while stoned. Like that anti-weed PSA where the kid is playing around with his dad's gun and he accidentally blows his friend's face off. Yes it's hilarious, but can you even begin to imagine the magnitude of stress you would experience if you were the shooter? You'd go instantly bald. Now, what if, instead of some middle schooler with a bowl cut, you bestonedly shot your pet rabbit? And what if, instead of shooting it with a gun, you just looked down at the bunny and there was suddenly blood spurting out of its paw? We wouldn't wish that kind of freakout on our worst enemy, but this weekend somebody apparently wished it on a house full of well-meaning partiers in Brooklyn…Last Friday I was over at a friend's apartment with five or six other buds and we decided to cook some pot brownies. People got called, an entire bag ended up in the batter, and pretty quickly what we thought was going to be a subdued little get-together turned into a 15-person trip to the moon. The brownies were excellent, jokes were flying, just some really great work all around.I went out for a cigarette and when I came back in everyone was FREAKING out. Like a full-blown mass panic. One guy was literally shouting "I'm freaking out!" and scrambling around trying to find his jacket so he could bail. Ruby, the host's pet rabbit, was hanging out next to her cage. She'd broken her claw and was bleeding all over the place.I'd had rabbits for 12 years growing up, and all of a sudden this wealth of information I'd totally forgotten about swept back over me. This kind of thing happens to rabbits all the time. Their nails get too long and eventually just crack. You're supposed to cut them every so often, but it requires special clippers and can be really nerve-wracking because they've got this vein in one of the nails that you have to avoid, so it sort of goes without saying that Ruby hadn't had her nails cut in a while. The first thing I did was declare firmly "I HAD RABBITS" to the crowd and try to get everyone to calm down.It took a while for everyone to chill out because of the amount of blood. While I was soothing everyone's nerves, the host had picked up Ruby and it was now all over his shirt as well as the floor. Eventually everybody got cool, but that's when we noticed that the nail wasn't just broken, it had come completely out of its socket.Amid a fresh wave of panic we called two 24-hour vets (time had long since left us by this point, but looking back now I'd guess it was about 1 or 2 AM? God only knows how long Ruby was bleeding. At least an hour.). The first vet said flatly, "We don't do rabbits," and hung up on us. The second one connected us to a "bunny technician," who was finally able to walk us through the necessary treatment.We sprinkled flour on the bleeding socket, as told, to clot the blood. Then the technician said we should wrap the paw with gauze, which makes sense. When I asked one of the girls there to find some gauze, she dug a tampon out of her purse and pulled it open. I'd never seen that before—blew my mind. It worked terribly though. It wasn't as soft as gauze and really hard to wrap with. Fortunately by then the flour had kicked in.We had originally planned to watch IMAX Beavers. Ruby was still in shock, but by then a lot of people had left, so we sat down on the couch and put it on. What a weird movie.THOBEY CAMPIONPHOTOS BY BEN RITTER
Advertisement
Advertisement