Weathering The Storm

I’m fortunate to live in a place where palm trees sway in endless days of sunshine, and winters feel like spring. But despite the beautiful weather, there’s a constant dread, looming in the background, and you can count on it to show up every year without fail. Brace yourself, it’s hurricane season.

Storm’s A-Comin’

One year, as the peak of the season drew closer, I watched on television as a one hurricane after another made its way across the Atlantic. And then it came – another one, gaining in strength and size. It was a monster. I anxiously looked at the hurricane tracker app on my phone and saw that my worst fears were coming true. This Category 5 hurricane was headed straight in our direction, and when you live in Florida, you can run but you can’t hide.

Ready, Set, Pack

I frantically began packing and preparing to be ready to leave when we got the order to evacuate. Pictures, clothes, computers; what do you take with you when you watch a storm ripping through a Caribbean island, leaving disaster in its wake, not knowing if you’ll have a home to come back to if it lands on your doorstep? What do you do when you have eight rescued pets, two of which are your precious bunnies?

Miss Beasley and Mr. Bentley are my house rabbits. I anxiously stood in their room and looked around at boxes of hay, litter, tunnels, treats and toys. Unless you are a rabbit parent, you’d never imagine such a small animal could need so many things. I confess I wasn’t ready for this. I had no list prepared of things to pack for them and I hadn’t given any thought to how I would set them in up in the place where we planned to ride out the storm.

I mentally walked through the steps I took to clean their room and set them up each day, to help me decide what to pack so that I wouldn’t forget anything in my stressed state. We planned to take both cars, so I knew I would have some additional space for their things, but with six other animals, their things and our own, I had to be practical about what I packed. Ideas like transferring their hay from a large bulky box to a drum liner saved a lot of packing space in the cars.

A Travel Carrier Dilemma with an Unexpected Solution

Even though all the packing and preparations were coming together, I still had a bigger worry looming in the back of my mind: How were my rabbits going to make a 14-hour trip in the car? The only time they went anywhere in the car was to the vet, and there was no way they could possibly ride in a small carrier for all that time. They needed access to a litterbox and hay, and room to move around some.

I began looking around my house for another option to replace their carrier. Then staring at a laundry basket, it hit me – I can convert the basket into a large carrier, using wire grid cube storage panels and Velcro strips. In fact, I had made a large, foldable pen from the wire grids, to set them up in the place where we were headed. Relieved that I had found my solution, I went to work on their new carrier.

Early the next morning, we loaded everything into the cars, including the makeshift carrier. I took the bunnies to the car in their regular carrier and then transferred them to the new one. They immediately began looking around with curiosity as they munched on hay. Confident that they seemed happy with their new travel accommodations, we started the cars and were on our way.

Trouble on the Road

The trip went smoothly until mid-morning on the second day. I looked in the back seat to see if they were okay and saw Miss Beasley hunched over in a ball and not moving. Worry set in as we continued down the road. Preparing for the worst, I called a relative where we were headed to ask her to find a local vet that specializes in rabbits. Despite all efforts, it looked as though my fear of them getting sick, far from home was happening. Then we stopped to get gas, and something told me to try giving her water. I bought a bottle of water and offered it to her. She immediately started drinking, and right away looked much better. Her eyes became brighter, she had energy and began eating hay. That’s when I realized rabbits can get dehydrated on a road trip and need water breaks along the way.

There and Back: Lessons Learned from Traveling with Rabbits

Aside from that one obstacle they did very well on the trip. Even though we didn’t stop overnight on the way back, and it took 14 hours to get home (which fortunately was still standing), they were fine.

That experience taught me just how incredibly resilient rabbits are and how much their curious nature makes them well suited for new adventures. Whether it’s a road trip for pleasure, or to escape a hurricane or other emergency, with the right planning ahead of time, rabbits can be great travelers and weather any storm.

Reviewed by HRS Staff

Author: Bettye Daniels