Our vegetable garden is well-protected from our rural neighborhood’s profusion of deer, raccoons, skunks, and rabbits. Or so we thought. We have a combined wooden/wire/electric fence that completely surrounds our 2300 square foot garden complex. A German Shepherd with wolf-like hunting instincts secures the outer perimeter.
We originally built the fence to provide Maddie with a big enclosed dog yard where she would be safe and stay out of trouble while we were at work. We quickly learned that her only trouble WAS that fence and that she was far safer on the outside of it than on the inside, where she would spend her hours plotting and executing her next perilous escape (to the front porch to sleep quietly until we came home). We now fence in our gardens rather than our pets and have one very happy free-range dog.
Doug and I were out in the garden last weekend thinning out our strawberry plants — something we should have done last fall. Foreshadowing the day’s events, I had just read online that alongside slugs and birds, rabbits can be detrimental to strawberry patches because they like to dine on strawberry flowers.
Maddie seemed unusually interested in this thinning process.
Ahhh… this would be why.
This is a nest of adorable baby cottontail rabbits…
…that will someday very soon grow into big hungry menacing rabbits that will eat our garden and multiply exponentially into more hungry menacing rabbits that will eat more of our garden.
Awesome.
So these rabbits are reproducing WITHIN the protection of the very fence that’s supposed to keep them out. On the other side of the fence, Maddie takes great pleasure in keeping the population of less-fortunate bunny rabbits in check.
But now that we’ve laid eyes on this furry little bundle of cuteness, can we be so cold-hearted as to knowingly turn the nest over to the unforgiving jaws of our canine beast?
Do we sacrifice our garden or do we sacrifice these innocent fuzzballs? The longer I look at them, the more real life is blurred by watercolor visions of Peter Rabbit in a bright blue jacket. Mr. McGregor gave me nightmares as a kid. I don’t want to be Mrs. McGregor. But I also have strong motherly instincts towards my garden and a hands-off ethic when it comes to interfering with young wildlife.
In the past few months, I’ve continued to have “who are you?” moments when my husband does something so contrary to the person that I thought I married. (Thankfully, I have more pleasant surprises than bad ones.) Doug, who regularly shoots nesting swallows out of our barn rafters, is apparently, completely smitten with baby rabbits. I found myself lecturing to him that these are not domestic rabbits, they are wild animals. Overpopulated wild animals. And no, he can’t keep them as pets.
Knowing that they were too young to a.) run away, and b.) survive without a Mama (a role that I wasn’t going to volunteer for), we left them in their nest for another week while we weighed our options.
Today we moseyed back out to the garden and took a quick peek down under the leaves and fur. Instantly, a tiny bunny bolted from the nest, leapt off the raised bed, and darted under the toolshed to begin its long and carefree life in our garden. It was clearly time to act. Relocate or terminate remaining bunnies now or forever serve nibbled-leaf salads. We didn’t consider termination as an option. It’s Easter Eve for gosh sake.
Re-investigating the bunny situation after leaving them alone for a week
Project relocation began. Upon extracting the remaining five bunnies from the nest, we realized that two of the five were much smaller than the others and we weren’t sure they’d be able to survive on their own yet. We decided we’d keep them together for another week in a makeshift bunny cage to ensure that they were all ready for the real world. I had two rules for my soft-hearted husband: 1. No naming. 2. No petting.
Stealing bunnies one-by-one from their Five-star garden spa accommodations.
Doug cut a rectangle out of the lid of a big plastic storage container, screwed on an old screen, and plopped in some straw, a small blanket, and five bunnies. I offered them a salad bar of green grass, dandelion greens, and organic lettuce.
One bunny keeping watch while the other four snooze under the blanket
I did some Google searches on rearing baby rabbits and feel very thankful that we left them in the nest with their mother for that extra week. They are biologically complex little buggers. I don’t think feeding baby rabbits every 2-3 hours with an eye-dropper at my office desk would have gone over well. I’m fairly confident they’re now old enough to survive solely on solid foods.
Stay tuned for our bunny progress and Happy Easter!
I found 2 baby bunnies the day before Easter. There mom had been ran out on the burrow and killed. We could not find any more babies. There were hawks all out in the field where we found them. So we took them home. Unfortunately the sweet precious one (Scooter) died Thursday before last, so now I have Skeeter left. She is as WILD as a betsy bug! She will be going back into the wild very soon.
Last year arounb Easter our cat gave birth to a litter of five kittens, one was stillborn. At around the same time we found a litter of baby rabbits, their mother had died on top of them. We managed to convince our cat to adopt the baby bunnies (did you know that baby rabbits are called kittens too) we released five of the ‘kittens’ and we kept the sixth bunny and one kitten. To this day the rabbit and the kitten are best friends and are forever tearing around the house annoying their poor mother.