Bunnies! Cute, fluffy, adorable, little bunnies!

People that come to Juniper Village at Aurora often notice and ask about all the giraffe statues they see all over the community.  The giraffe is a symbol of sorts for us for two reasons:  One has to do with the giraffe’s long neck which symbolizes how we strive to reach way up, to go above and beyond.  The second reason is because at one time it was thought that giraffes had one of the largest hearts.  In reality, they have a small heart, however, it has such great power from a very strong heart beat because it has to generate blood flow from the heart all the way up to the brain which is quite a distance.  This heart beat is so strong generates twice the blood pressure of a human and double the beats per minute (170 beats per minute) as compared to a human.

We take pride in our giraffe symbol and a beautiful example of this is a recent rescue made by our maintenance director, Steve.  Steve found three dead baby bunnies in our courtyard.  The mother rabbit was gone and there were two small surviving baby bunnies.  He took them in and bought cat’s milk formula and a very small bottle and began the process of bottle feeding them.  One of them was extremely small, much smaller than the other one, and we didn’t think it would survive.  However, Steve would not even entertain the idea that the little one wouldn’t make it.  He took them home every night and fed them every two hours.  After the first couple of days, you could see that the smallest one was getting stronger.  It was not able to hop initially, it would walk off balance, and when it would sit up to try to clean its face, it would fall over. Still, Steve kept feeding them and letting them run around to get strong (even letting them run around on his bed at home) and they both continued to grow and flourish!

The team at JVA helped as Steve’s backup on occasion so he had some time off from caring for these adorable bunnies.  They are both doing very well, eating grass now and even drinking water from a shallow dish, so the goal is to release them back into the courtyard at JVA in the next week or two.

What a perfect example of the wonderful heart of Steve and the staff at Juniper Village at Aurora!  They truly embody the philosophy of a compassionate, strong heart and going above and beyond to make a difference!