The first of the family's four rabbits was two-year-old Branwell. He lived in the top cage in the garden shed dad had dedicated to the rabbits. Lucy had been the next rabbit they bought and had also come from the pet shop. She was gentler than Branwell, and although she was supposed to belong to the younger child in the family, in fact both of the children found her easier to handle. She lived in the bottom cage.

The other two rabbits, Elloise and Polly, had come from friends, and both been taken to the vet and vaccinated by their previous owner. Elloise had two three-week-old babies owing to a mishap when the children put the wrong rabbits in together in the run and then had trouble getting Branwell out. Elloise lived in the middle cage and Polly shared with Lucy in the bottom cage.

Early one morning the children noticed a wild rabbit creep into the open door of the shed to steal dropped food. All seemed fine until one morning only Polly came out of her sleeping compartment. When their hastily-summoned dad opened the cage, he found a very sick Lucy lying on her side in the sleeping compartment.

When I examined her at the surgery half an hour later she was barely conscious. She was taking shallow breaths and felt cold. I put her into a converted baby incubator to keep her warm and gave her warm fluids and antibiotics by injection, but I explained she had little hope of pulling through.

Even more worrying, I was deeply afraid that she might have caught rabbit haemorrhagic disease, the dreadful rabbit plague which has swept across Asia and Europe for more than a decade, killing millions of rabbits in its path in imitation of the human plague of the middle ages. It causes death from internal bleeding in just a few hours. It could have come from the wild rabbit which the children had seen. Sadly Lucy died later that morning.

With the owner's agreement I sent some specimens from Lucy to the laboratory. Two days later they confirmed that she had died of rabbit haemorrhagic disease. Although I vaccinated Branwell the day Lucy died, it was too late and one morning five days later the family found him dead in his cage.

Elloise's babies were young enough to be protected by their mother's milk but they will be getting vaccinated as soon as they are eight weeks old and all of them will get their annual boosters.

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