Bunnies Part Two

Chris came home and immediately dug a grave. I said, “How do you know it’s dead?”

Chris said grimly, “It’s dead enough.”

I said, “Do you think rabbits line their nests with rabbit fur, or do you really think that’s all dead rabbit fur?”

“I don’t know,” he said.

“I saw a bunny running away from the yard afterwards, so maybe that was it and he escaped,” I said hopefully. “Have you even looked at the spot?”

“I saw the general area,” he said, grimacing. Evidently he had seen the loose bits of rabbit fur.

Once he’d finished digging his grave (“How do you know that’s deep enough?”) he walked over to the pile of rabbit fur. Cautiously, he poked at it with his shovel. When nothing happened, he shoveled the top layer of leaves and dirt, and inspected it.

“Nothing here,” he said.

He moved his shovel around the area and then said, “Wait, there’s like a rat or something in here.”

“UGH!” I yelled. Naturally, I leaned in to take a look.

As we watched, some small creatures began to slide out from the hole, almost as though they were worms coming to the surface during a rainstorm.

“I think those are baby rabbits,” I said, remembering back to the time when our contractor’s friend had found a baby rabbit and brought it in our garage, before I called the vet and found out you were supposed to leave baby rabbits where they were.

These baby rabbits were even smaller than the one I’d seen before. They were also…very wiggly. In rather a disgusting maggot-ish way.

“They do have kind of big ears,” Chris said. The ears, from what we could see, were white dots against the grey bodies.

Chris shoveled the layer of leaves back on top of the hole, although the babies had, by then, almost left it completely.

“Okay, you better call Animal Control,” Chris said.

“We’re supposed to leave baby rabbits alone,” I said.

“Well, if we leave them alone, the dogs will get them.”

I mentally imagined my reaction to going outside one day and finding scattered, bloody bits of fur in the yard.

“Okay, I’ll call,” I said.

But it turned out that Animal Control only took care of dead animals. Which I guess these were going to be, if I couldn’t find someone to tell us what we should do.

Posted by: Supersonic Jane | April 24, 2007 | 10:34 pm
Posted in: This Life