Rescue

Peter

Photo by Grace

Yesterday, Grace took Sam out for his morning leak. I was getting the girls stuff ready for school and I heard Grace scream at the top of her lungs. So I ran out to see what was going on. Grace was pulling on Sam's leash with all of her might but couldn't pull Sam back. (He's a good 60 pounds now.) "Sam found baby bunnies and he already killed one and I can't keep him away from the others!" I rushed over and pulled Sam off. She was right. One was dead and another just lay there breathing but unable to move. Grace was traumatized. She was so sad for the bunnies. I was sad too. And I was trying to figure out what to do. I was afraid that if I tried to pick it up that the mom wouldn't come back. And it looked too young to feed it, which meant if I brought it inside it would die anyway. So I decided to wait it out a bit. I got the girls off to school and later found the other one had died.

The girls and I were pretty sad. I, not being so big on the dead animal removal thing, decided to let Matt take care of it. He was out late last night, so this morning I asked him to do the deed. He headed out back and I saw him with a shovel. A few minutes later he walked into the kitchen with "that look" on his face...but he didn't say anything. "What's the matter?" I asked.

"Nothing." He went down to the basement and came up with his leather gloves. He still had that look on his face. "WHAT?" I asked. So finally he says, "I found another bunny. It's alive. I'm putting it in a box so you can figure out what to do with it because I don't have the heart to kill it or leave it. Don't let the girls touch it, who knows what kind of diseases it could have. And don't ever tell Rane." And he went outside. He brought me the bunny in a cardboard box, and left to go chop wood. (It's the whole softy/tough guy routine.)

I was so excited. I felt all "save the bunnies" inside. He was sooo cute. So I did what every rational person would do in this situation. I googled, "Help, I found a wild bunny and I don't know how to save it." It was an amazingly productive strategy. I found out a number of things. First, touching a bunny doesn't prevent its mother from going back to it. Second, I was right, you can't feed it. Third, the mother doesn't stay with the nest because that would attract predators. She feeds the bunnies at night and before dawn. So what you are supposed to do is put the bunny back in the nest and cover it up and cross two sticks over it. Then wait until the next day. If the sticks have moved and the bunny is warm, the mother has probably come and fed it, and then you know it's best to leave it alone. If that doesn't happen, then you may need to call for help. In our case, the bunny was old enough that it was probably out of the nest. It had all the signs: its ears were perked, the diamond on its forehead was faded, and it could jump fast. We found this out when I took it out of the box and tried to put it back in the nest. It decided it would find a hiding place of its own.

So Grace, who was so elated that a bunny had survived, got a few pictures of it before we set it free. We're hoping Daddy will have his own little Peter Cotton Tail to deal with this summer.

In fact, I think that's a great name for a little bunny. We'll call him Peter.

Hmmm. Maybe we need to go find a few Beatrix Potter books today.

Peter in his new hiding place.