Happy Easter!

Happy Easter!

Somebunny likes you.

I'm always amazed at the variety and relative boldness of our local wildlife. This morning, we were opening the kitchen windows to let in the glorious breeze outside to enjoy as we ate breakfast. As we did so, a rabbit came bounding across the yard towards the house. DW and I were talking at the time and the rabbit only came closer. We moved closer to the windows to watch and then called the children down to watch the rabbit. The critter was not disturbed in the least and continued to eat while we had our own breakfast remaining just outside the window for about 10-15 minutes until disturbed by something nearby.

To give you an idea of how close, take a look at the sequence of pictures:

DD and DS looking at the rabbit eating the clover growing in the garden.


Bunny eating the leaves off the Black-Eyed Susan.


Bunny checking us out. (While eating...)


It seems that the house and the windows/screens form this invisible wall for the animals that makes them think it is safe for them to approach.

Generally we don't mind our wildlife - except when the bear is upsetting the compost bin or the rabbit is eating the Liatris down to the nubs. Then again, we could have other problems!

Alas poor Lucky...

I posted here earlier about our local rabbits. The little guy in the picture was dubbed "Lucky" by the kids as we continued to see him around the yard at various times. We didn't see any of the siblings that were in the nest with him, so we figured he was "lucky".

Today, I was cleaning up the yard and DW and I were looking at things we wanted to do for some landscaping. While we were looking around, she pointed out a rather large quantity of rabbit droppings with some level of disgust. Later, as I was working in the backyard, there was an area with tufts of fur. It was very fine, soft fur with a grey inner layer and brown and white tips on it.

Rabbit colored.

Uh oh.

I figured that one of the rabbits must have been a snack for our local bobcat, a fox or perhaps a hawk. There was quite a bit of fur, but I found no evidence of blood, bone or anything else.

I quietly pointed out this somewhat disturbing find out to my DW by letting her know that we would have fewer rabbit droppings in the yard. She promptly went to take pictures for her blog. (She hasn't posted anything yet. I'll add a link here when she does.) DS and DD wanted to know what DW was doing laying outside on the lawn with a camera and went outside to see what she was doing. DS came in without comment, but DD seemed upset that something had gotten one of the "cute bunnies" and she hoped that it wasn't Lucky. With no small amount of sarcasm, DW pointed out to DD that whichever one of the rabbits it was, it certainly wasn't lucky.

Bunny Update

I got home from work this evening and decided I'd better mow the lawn as rain is threatening. While I was mowing, DW came out to bring some compost out to the bin and she checked on the bunny's burrow. They were all gone. Either they were weaned or the mother moved them to a new den.

As I was mowing, one of the baby bunnies came tearing out of an island of plantings in the lawn and made a break for the wood as I came near with the mower. The bunny certainly moved quickly and looked healthy. I guess they must be weaned.

WHATTHEHECKWASTHAT?

This evening I was out mowing the hay-field that our lawn has become with the large amount of rain that has fallen recently. It's the first dry night in a long time - in all truth, last Monday evening was the last dry night that I can recall.

After I finished mowing with the lawn tractor, I got out the weed-wacker to finish up around the edges. As I was trimming an area under the kids' play structure, I was getting this fine gray stuff flying up. At first, I thought it was dead moldy grass, but something didn't look quite right about it. Then, all of a sudden...

WHATTHEHECKWASTHAT?!?!?!?

Something small and very fast came flying up out of the ground.

I turned off the weed-wacker and looked around. The grayish fluff was some kind of fur.

Hiding in the corner of the structure behind the climbing wall was a baby bunny. I was concerned that I'd hit it with the weed-wacker and injured it, so I picked it up to make sure that it was OK. I hadn't thought about baby bunnies making noise, but this one sort of squealed and grunted - a bit like a Guinea Pig. After a minute, it calmed down. The kids were very excited to see the baby bunny, but it had to go back into its nest. After putting the bunny back into the nest, we covered it back up with some grass clippings to help camouflage the area. There were several other siblings in the burrow. I later found out that mother rabbits pull out their own fur to line the nests to keep the baby bunnies warm. Hopefully 'mom' will be back this evening to take care of her brood.