Fall is the time for Bailey to be hideous...

Jimmy took Bailey to the vet on Friday and it was determined that he does not have fur mites. Bunnies have really sensitive skin, and if they scratch themselves too hard, some of the hair may fall out around the scratch. The vet that we took him to specializes in small animals and rodents, and Jimmy said that she was really good. She took his ear temperature, weighed him, picked him up and felt his belly, felt his boy parts (ewww), and said that he is one of the healthiest bunnies that she has ever seen. She also commented that he's very whiny and gets frustrated easily (he must get that from me). But then she also called him a good-looking boy; makes me proud! The first vet that we went to did not do that kind of stuff! She just kinda looked at him...didn't even take his temperature or pick him up or anything! We're definitely going to stay with the new lady and get Zorro and Pepper registered there too!

Anyway, Bailey's fur is growing back, but the weird thing is that it is growing back so dark! Here is a recap of Bailey's weird fur patterns:

Baby Bailey! This is probably a week after we first got him. Look at his beautiful honey brown fur!

And then we started to notice that his face was getting a little bit darker.

And then we moved to Wisconsin and he went through his first big shed. Notice how in this picture his head hair has patches of different colors and different lengths. Also notice the fact that it looks like he's wearing a skirt! All the light colored fur on his thighs eventually fell off. Then he looked uniform and beautiful again!

So here is a new picture of Bailey's dark bald spot. It looks like the fur that is about to come in is going to be as dark as his face.

The gross thing about a shedding bunny is that the fur is so thick that the dead stuff gets held in place by the living stuff. So if you very gently pull on a chunk of Bailey's fur, you will likely pull out a big chunk of dead hair. Gross! So in order to prevent Bailey from getting hairballs by grooming himself, Jimmy and I have been trying to gently pull on his fur (that we can tell is dead; it gets kinda light and just looks different) to pull out all the dead stuff so that he doesn't eat it. This is a picture of Jimmy giving Bailey a nice combing, and as you can see the paper towel already has quite a bit of fur in it!

A picture of me manually pulling out chunks of fur. This doesn't hurt him, I promise!

The finished product! Keep in mind that we did this yesterday and the day before. Each day, about this much has come out!

So here is the most recent picture! I'm not even going to bother pointing out all the weird irregularities because there are too many. He's not very pretty right now, but soon he will be done shedding and he'll look great again!