Rabbits

Sure, life finds a way. So do all the forces conspiring against it.

---

Friday morning I was leaving for work when I opened the garage door and found what appeared to be a large pinecone in the driveway. As we don’t have any conifers next to the driveway, I was curious as to how it ended up there, and I went to explore.

It had been raining all week, and there, next to a puddle, was a baby rabbit. At first glance, I assumed it was dead, but after a few seconds, I realized the poor critter was in fact alive, breathing shallowly now and then. The morning temperatures were in the 50s; it was probably hypothermic.

There really wasn’t anything to do. Most of what I know about baby rabbits revolves around a grim understanding that they die. They are comically vulnerable. Loud noises could spur them into fatal shock. I wasn’t sure how this fellow had ended up in our driveway, but I needed to get to work. I put him under a rhododendron next to the garage.

My mistake is that I told the kids what I’d done.

To be fair, I’d also texted Kelly to let her know, and by the time she arrived back with Julia, the entire family went out, retrieved little Thumper, and activated the little rabbit rescue plan.

Kelly warmed a dish towel in the microwave and bundled up the poor chap. Annie sat quietly on the couch most of the morning holding onto it, checking now and then with the impatient excitement that seven year-olds exude.

Meanwhile, I began to piece a few things together. The previous two nights, our tripod doodle Millie had taken side treks out around the yard when I let her out for a final bathroom trip before bed. Normally these endeavors aren’t terribly time consuming; the dog runs out, does her business, then runs back inside. But for two nights, she disappeared around the house and took forever to come back. On the second night, I finally walked around to find her shoulders deep under a different rhododendron (we have a bunch), clearly preoccupied. It began to make sense how a tiny rabbit might have been deposited on our driveway. Millie is a curious pup, after all.

The tip about the bush led Kelly to the discovery of the rabbit’s little burrow. And there, nestled in the pine needles, was a trio of siblings.

Now Kelly is no Elmyra–she is a devoted carnivore–but few things melt her heart quite like little rabbits. Operation Rabbit Rescue soon expanded to include the entire gang. Then came the Troubles.

I don’t have much experience in herpetology, but I was still surprised to see how little time it took for a black snake to show up.

Saturday afternoon, one of the kiddos reported its presence about fifty or so feet from the burrow. Our neighbor, Cindy, noted she’d spotted it sunning in her yard the previous afternoon. Now it was slithering nosily about.

We had things to do, though–typical weekend errands–and we resolved to go about our business. I was loading up the recycling in the car when I heard a strange chirping noise, like an angry mocking bird. Kelly heard it, too. It sounded like a bird defending its nest against a predator.

Or, as you’ve likely already guessed, like a tiny rabbit that is being attacked by a snake.

We walked down to the burrow under the rhododendron to find three of the little thumpers scattering into the pine needles. The fourth, bless it, was squawking for its life, its little head already in the black snake’s jaws, its body surrounded by a spiral of death-squeezing scaled muscle. The kids rushed up. Annie screamed a panicked yelp. It was a pitiful scene.

I have to admit that my reaction to all of this was to simply observe nature running its course. I don’t mind a black snake–they are good helpers, especially when it comes to keeping copperheads and mice at bay–and, well, snakes have to eat, too.

Kelly decided that the circle of life needed to be broken. She grabbed a stick and thwacked the snake until it released the bunny’s head and coiled up beside it, understandably pissed off. The relentless stick assault continued until it slithered back off into the yard. I was able to chase it back across the street.

The snake made its way back, though, the taste of bunny too fresh and irresistible to simply give up without another try. With only a few yards till it reached the burrow, it met the wrath of Mom; one swift blow from a shovel, and the threat was decapitated. The kids moved in to tend to the bunny who so nearly became an afternoon snack and gathered the others back together.

If loud noises could spook a bunny to death, surely being mauled by a snake had to be enough trauma to send it to its grave, I thought. But no. That little guy had mettle. By nightfall, the cute quartet was relocated to a new little burrow under yet a different rhododendron, brothers and sisters nestled together in fuzzy warmth. (The bunnies understandably kept running out of their ancestral birthplace–I guess the scent of their serpent attacker was too alarming to rest comfortably.) Peace and harmony were restored.

Two days later, though, another predator would disrupt their rhododendron Shangri-La, and this time, Kel couldn’t dispatch the offender with a shovel.

That’s because the prowler was our three-legged doodle.

In hindsight, nobody realized that Millie was out in the yard. Kelly had gone for a walk and came up the hill to find Millie in the lower driveway, laid out with her paws before her. You can guess what was under her paws. I came home from work moments later.

Once more, the idyllic cottontails had been scattered into the four winds. Annie was cradling Millie’s brief chew toy, watching tentatively to see if it was still breathing. None of the other bunnies could be found.

Annie curled up in the living room, a warm towel in her lap, the lone rabbit hanging on by a thread, it seemed. Millie laid in the corner, panting in the happy-dumb way dogs are, unaware her playtime amounted to involuntary rabbitslaughter.

At this point, my dear reader, I admit I was a bit exasperated. It all seemed inevitable, really. Life is a struggle against the dispassionate, unyielding forces that our natural world present. Our futile efforts to build some kind of wall around their rhododendron lair–and I haven’t even really begun to describe one setup, replete with baby-gates and bedsheets–all of it was a good-faith effort, and none of it had worked. There were simply too many things interested in eating (or at least playing fetch with) baby bunnies. I mean, Cormac McCarthy died recently, and if ever there was a time to reflect upon futility, it was now.

Julia and Thomas took on a new pessimism in the wake of Millie’s melee. Julia’s pre-teen maturity seemed to begin grasping mortality. She practiced a cool detachment. Thomas, in a way that can only be assigned to being his father’s son, vocalized the odds weighed against those bunnies, preparing out loud for the worst. Even so, he went out in the yard to see if he could find where the other rabbits had hopped off to.

Annie, of course, refused to give up hope. Soon, there was a box with a heating pad and towel-blanket in the bottom and a bundle of timothy hay and fruit for snacking. Later, Kelly happened upon a second bunny in the straw, who soon joined its sibling in the box. As the sun was setting, I decided to stroll around and look once more, and with a humorous serendipity, I found a third. Later that evening, we returned all three to their burrow for the night. Kel fashioned a box to cover their nook, securing it with a barbell weight.

Nobody (save, maybe, the seven year-old) is naïve to all of this. Nothing is black and white, nothing is without consequence, and yes, snakes (which don’t happen to be as cute) deserve to make it, too. You don’t need to make the argument. Mother nature and the snake and the doodle were only doing what they know to do.

But there’s something hopeful about seeing a little fight against that swelling, inevitable tide. Something that fills even my curmudgeonly heart with a warm sense. Life can be brutal. If you have the chance to beat back the prevailing forces with a stick and grant even a short respite with a box and a heating pad and some timothy hay and some time spent in the warm lap of a cooing second-grade girl with curly hair, maybe it’s worth taking that chance.