The first time I found a nest of baby rabbits, I was digging a hole for a new shrub when some earth at the edge of the hole started to move. I touched the spot, dug in a bit, felt fur, screeched, then focused on five baby rabbits snuggled in a saucer-like indentation in the ground. I didn’t want them, but I was not about to kill them. I covered the nest with leaves and went back to planting my shrub. I was troubled, though. How many other nests were in my yard? Words like “plague” and “infestation” came to mind. Later that day I heard a commotion near the newly planted shrub and looked out to see my male cat with a baby rabbit dangling from his mouth. I tore after him, all fears of infestation forgotten, screaming, “Drop it, Bowden, drop it now!” Bowden, of course, did nothing of the kind. Finally, I covered my ears and let nature take its course, as they say. I could see advantages to this approach.
Every year since the rabbit and I moved in together, I have struggled with my “relationship” to her. Each gardening season I have asked myself, “Can I perhaps this year harden my heart and get rid of her?” The spring day I put in three flats of pansies in the morning and came back in the afternoon to find every flower eaten and every plant chewed down to the ground, the answer was “yes.” Had a gun been handy, I would have shot her.
Other times, though, especially summer evenings, when the last light has brought calm to the garden and the plants radiate an energy that calls out one’s higher nature, I have lounged on my patio, the memory of devoured pansies long gone, and watched my rabbit nibbling clover and thought, “How lovely it is to share my garden with other creatures.”
The summer Bowden died there were rabbits everywhere — teenagers, toddlers, young adults, and grandmas, a swarm of feeders all hopping back and forth from their residence under the deck to my garden. They had no longer had any fear. When taking down my newly planted Salvia, they didn’t even bother to look up. When I ran at them, they would move, but slowly and just a slight way off. People talk about homosexuality being unnatural. Nonsense. I will tell you what is truly unnatural: the spectacle of a full-grown rabbit in the middle of the day in the middle of my lawn, stretching out each leg in turn, taking her time, licking herself clean, then lying down for a noon nap, Where has trembling and twitching and “ready to run” gone?
I tried to interest my surviving cat in the job of rabbit hunting, but Toddy would have none of “nature’s way.” No blood on her white paws. My heart hardened. I called Pest Control. I wanted the rabbits removed.
I spoke with a man quite stressed over rabbits. Apparently the northeast was experiencing an infestation the summer I called. He was not hopeful. He could trap my rabbits, but other rabbits would just move in. I could put up a fence, but it would have to surround the property and be specially built. I could buy a pellet gun, but I would have to shoot to kill. If I only wounded them, they would die, painfully, and most likely under my deck. His advice? “Go to a dairy barn and catch one of the cats working there. She’ll take care of your rabbits.”
If only Toddy hadn’t waited so many years for Bowden to die so that she could live in cat-free space, I would have followed his advice. But I knew she would never tolerate another cat on the premises, so I made my peace with the rabbit once again.
Then came a bad winter and another change of heart. Standing on packed snow, the rabbit could reach and eat the branches of my oakleaf hydrangea, reducing this much prized shrub to stubble. Still when deep snow apparently blocked off all entrances and exits to the condo under my deck, I looked out my kitchen window at the trackless expanse of white and worried about my rabbit. Would she be able to get out from under the deck? What would she find to eat? How would she manage? When I finally saw a tunnel from the deck to the garden, I was relieved. “She’s alive,” I yelled to Sara. Sara was quick to remind me than only days ago I had wanted to find this very rabbit’s dead body next to my chewed hydrangea.
Then I noticed that my rabbit had headed straight for the Euonymous fortunei, her favorite plant but now buried in snow. With great care and precision, she had pawed the snow away, exposed the plant and eaten it. I was as impressed as I was angry. Such an insistence on preference in the midst of a blizzard and from a rabbit seemed to carry an important message.
But now my deck of western red cedar, lovingly maintained for 24 years, is gone and a new deck of no-maintenance Trex is replacing it. When I asked Drew, the carpenter, if the new deck would keep rabbits from getting under it, he assured me it would. I didn’t realize until I heard his answer that I had hoped he would say that no deck is rabbit-proof.
I don’t know where the rabbit is right now, given that her home is gone, but I guess I hope she will be back. I think it likely, because I suspect she is a powerful rabbit. According to Peter Wohlleben’s The Inner Life of Animals, rabbits live in a strictly hierarchical world “Each animal,” says Wohlleben, “vigorously defends its rank, and for good reason”: high ranking rabbits experience far less stress than those on the bottom of the social ladder and as a result they live longer and better.
I am sure my rabbit must be high-ranking. After all, for years she has secured prime lodgings for herself under my deck. I conjure up a vision of her, in top hat and fancy suit, driving away the equivalent of rabbit hoi-polloi before settling herself down for a warm and safe sleep.
The new deck will soon be finished. I will let you know if the rabbit returns.
If you would like to share this newsletter, here is the link:
http://perennialwisdom.net/the rabbit/
You can sign up here.http://perennialwisdom.net.