Bunny Nest

How three more bunnies came into the world

One summer morning Bea was fixated on a hole in the ground, trying to get at something or someone in it. I thought it was a mole. Plenty of moles call the yard their home.

I had started clearing the “bells” (what are those plants that I can’t get rid of? One long-ago summer I dug up the roots but evidently not all the roots because they returned in force) but I stopped clearing them when I noticed how grass was piled up and dirt dug out, making a nice little home for someone right up against the big rock.

Bea hadn’t been going after moles, but someone far cuter. A baby bunny a few days old, maybe just a day old, peeked back at me from a cozy nest with her three siblings.

Tiny baby bunnies. Barely moving. I knew mama bunny wouldn’t come during the day, not with so much dog activity, so I placed wire mesh over the nest, resting on the big rock.

First glimpse of the baby bunnies

Worried that mama may not come home at all that first night and the babies might need to be taken to WRC, I set up the trail camera that night. But I neglected to remove the wire mesh. No worries, mama came and figured out how to get behind the protective covering.

Mama has horns because mama has the virus. (If you want to know what virus, etc., click here.) If nothing else good can be said of them, the horns make her easier to identify, because surprise visitors do show up, even to a bunny home.

The first surprise visitor: a rabbit without horns. Could this be daddy?

The second surprise: a prowler who did no harm.

Still mama comes to her babies every night and obsessively covers them up to make sure they’re safe.

The babies emerge from the nest to meet mama halfway to nurse.

Eventually they don’t go back to the nest.

But I don’t realize it and I play with the dogs in the front yard just after dawn, as is our routine. Uša, ball-obsessed, focuses on me and the balls I’m tossing to him. Bea, critter-obsessed, watches for squirrels and birds before usually joining in the ball fun. One morning, however, she finds a baby bunny.

I was too late seeing her. I was too lax in my vigilance of watching out for the critters who decided to make my yard their temporary home. I am not angry or frustrated with Bea because this is almost certainly how she survived for the year or two before she was rescued. I am sad because I feel guilty, specifically ashamed and remorseful, for my dereliction in keeping these two species, Bea and bunnies, separated safely. I knew the stakes, I knew the circumstances, and I went about my morning routine as if all would be fine, when there was the possibility that the babies were still in the yard. I let down sentient beings, both Bea and the bunnies, who make my home their temporary home. A home is always temporary, I tell myself. The life of wild animals is full of dangers at every corner, bush, or open field. I once saw a bald eagle carrying away a rabbit from my neighborhood. Life is temporary. But did it have to be so temporary in my front yard, under my tutelage?

Death is a part of life, just as continuing is a part of life.

The dogs were allowed only in the back yard while the babies grew up in the front yard. It confused the dogs, especially Uša who couldn’t run full-tilt after balls because the back yard is smaller. But they got used to it. The bunnies grew. All but one left and before she left, she gave the dogs a lesson in cunning. Bea spotted her under one bush. She darted one direction and then turned tail back in the opposite direction, ran past the front porch and under a different bush. The dogs, once they realized they’d been fooled once, were sure she had run all the way around the house to the back yard and blissfully being fooled twice.

That’s how three more bunnies came into the world.

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