9:55 a.m. - 2003-05-01
Baby Bunnies
Wow! Happy May Day, everybody! And I just had the most amazing May Day experience!
Of course it involved rabbits.
Bruce went out early this morning to mow the yard, which hasn't been mowed for a couple of weeks. After I dragged myself up out of my morning stupour, I got some coffee and went out to join him. I was sitting on the stone wall watching him mow, when suddenly I saw some little brown animals running away from the mower. I thought they were chipmunks! So I ran over to Bruce to tell him to shut off the mower, and as I was running I realised that they were, in fact, bunnies.
Little tiny cute little scared baby bunnies. They ran through the chain link fence to the side of the road.
Panic ensued, of course. Bruce shut off the mower and I carefully walked outside of the fence and got behind them. They very cooperatively ran back through the fence into the yard, except for one little guy who was so fat he couldn't get back through the fence and I had to herd him the long way around.
We managed to herd them very gently back up into the undergrowth at the base of the roses and fig tree. There were three of them. So darn cute!! I hope we didn't scare them to death.
We did a quick walk through to make sure there weren't anymore bunnies, and found a bunch of fur in an area where we had let some interesting clover get overgrown. It must have been their original nest - mother bunnies have a ruff of fur around their necks that they pull out to make nests with. Unlike European rabbits which live in burrows, American bunnies just make nests out in the middle of fields.
Or suburban lawns. You know, whatever.
Anyway, it appears the baby bunnies have survived at least to adolesence. This is one of the big challenges of this land - how to turn it into a beautiful space without totally destroying the wildlife habitat. It's something that really concerns me.
And I think I'm going to have to plant more basil. I had been wondering why my basil plants were getting chewed up....
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