Friday, April 07, 2006
Wascally Wabbits
This week, just in time for Easter, we had some visitors in our back yard - baby bunnies. Kristin noticed them just in time, for the first cat to come across them was Amber (If she were a sword, she'd be named Varmint-Slayer or some such. After seeing Amber nose-to-nose with the rabbit, she ran outside, only to scare another one in the yard to running, which attracted the attention of a wandering Lockheed.Well, the two bunnies preceeded to spend that evening curled up right next to the screen porch, in full sight of three extremely interested cats. The following morning, I placed these two back in their den, a small hole several yards from the house, as well as third bunny who was sitting out next to the hole. They were amazingly docile and were sooo cuddly. Must...resist...urge...to build a hutch.
We learned a lot about young bunnies along the way. At their age, the mother lives in a separate den, and only comes by once a day to nurse them. Their den is filled with down from the mother's fur, which explained the large tufts of fur we found around the yard (we figured Lockheed had been getting into tussles). Also, we learned that wild rabbits do not fare well in captivity (dashing my hopes of building a rabbit commune in our back yard.
We have not seen them in a day or two, but they are very good at blending in with the underbrush. We're hesitant to do any yard work back there until we're sure they've vamoosed. Hopefully we'll know for sure by next week.
------------------------------------------------