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| My Baby Bunnies |
I placed a few of my son’s orange miniature football cones around the nest so I would know ahead of time when she got near it, and when she got even remotely close to the cones, I warned her with a “No” and she would meander to another part of the yard.
After about a week of this, when my husband and I were on our patio chatting– not paying any attention to the dogs, although Hayley, our older Boxer never bothered with the nest, we heard a high pitched squeal and when we looked toward the sound, we saw that Kommit had pulled a baby bunny out of the nest! We ran to the bunny, now squirming on the ground—Kommit had taken off like a bat out of hell in the opposite direction–she knew she had done something wrong! I picked up the little bunny and to my untrained eyes, it appeared okay, so I gently placed it back in its nest with its siblings.
When I inspected the nest the next morning, to my utter regret, I found a dead bunny. I felt so sad, but what could I do? My dog was a rabbit killer, but she wouldn’t understand. My husband took the little bunny corpse and buried it beneath a tree. Now we only had two baby bunnies, but boy were they getting cute. Their naked little bodies had grown some gray fur and their ears were so tiny! They were black and lay close to their little heads and they felt like velvet.
Every morning I would check on my two little tenants. I pulled back the dried grass that their mother had covered them with the night before and when I touched them, they bounced! They were like little Mexican jumping beans. Not only did I touch them, but I picked them up, too. I just couldn’t help myself–they were just too precious not to hold and pet. (It’s a fallacy that the mother rabbit will abandon her babies if she smells humans on them, by the way.) I also watched for the mother rabbit. Every night after dusk, she would hop to the nest and sit on it to feed her babies. There’s something magical about watching nature in action.
During Operation Baby Bunny, I saw my niece, Miranda, who was four years old, and told her about our little visitors. “Miranda, we have baby bunnies in our back yard!” I excitedly told her in my best Aunt Pammy voice.
“You do?” she asked with wide curious brown eyes.
“Yes! And guess what?” My attempt at dragging out suspense always works on four year olds. “They bounce when I touch them!”
“Aunt Pammy,” she said as she rolled her awe-inspiring brown eyes, “they’re practicing hopping.” Her tone informed me that ALL adults should know something THAT elementary.
