Bunnies!
And no, I don't mean the chocolate kind.
Yesterday, my mother was outside clearing some of the dead grass and leaves from the gardens in the back yard, when she stumbled across a nest. She called me out to see. Kneeling down in the mud, I watched her gently move what appeared to be no more than a matted layer of thin, yellow grass--but from out of the grass came a head! Tiny, no larger than a Toonie, this little head looked up, wobbling slightly, eyes lidded and blind to the world. The little thing had no fur, just thin, gray skin, and its ears were pressed back on its head. I blinked and stared and realized, this was a baby bunny. Squirming beneath this one were at least two or three more. And with their eyes still closed and ears back, they can be no more than a day or two old.
Lindy carefully replaced the grass nest--something she'd been in the process of pulling up and throwing in the compost when the baby made itself known. With the grass back in place, you'd never see the nest; it's just a small bundle of grass and fur buried in a small hole in the ground. The mother made an appearance in the yard late in the evening, no worries yet that her babies have been abandoned.
Thinking about it, I've got to say that our backyard is not the worst place for a mother rabbit to hide her nest. Behind our back fence, there used to be trees and grassy fields, which have since been cut down, torn up and bulldozed into one gigantic mud flat--not a safe place for bunnies. And out in the mudflats, or the trees beyond, there are still coyotes; I can hear them sometimes at night, yipping and howling away. Here in the yard, they just have to watch out for our lab, our fluff-ball, and the neighbours' cats. I don't think that either Emma or Tia would be much interested in a small bunny, but you never know, so we are keeping a good watch on them all.
