“Leah, come here,” Mom called through the open back door. “We have a problem in the garden. It’s kind of a good problem, but…” Wendy smiled at her daughter. “You’ll see.”
Eight-year-old Leah was still in her Saturday jammies, the ones with pink and purple horses on them. Though she hadn’t finished her pancakes, she jumped up from the breakfast table, eyes alight. “What is it? A turtle?”
“Better…it’s a litter of baby bunnies,” Wendy said. “They’re under the tomato plants. I found ‘em when I pulled up that overgrown lettuce.”
Leah raced out to the garden with her mom in tow. “Where?”
Wendy bent down at the end of a row of tomatoes and moved a few dry leaves aside to reveal a tangle of warm, soft bodies in a shallow burrow, each tiny kit nosing its way to the bottom of the pile. “They started squeaking when I pulled this big lettuce plant. It was a great hiding place…I never saw them until the pile moved.”
“Can I hold one, just for a minute?”
“No, baby. We may already be in trouble, because if the momma gets scared and doesn’t come back, they’ll die.”
“Can’t we feed them?”
Wendy shook her head. “They’re so young, I doubt they’d live.” She covered the burrow, straightened, then sighed. ”Let’s figure out a shelter—”
“We could put them in a cage. That way the dogs will leave them alone,” Leah offered.
“Not a cage, but…” Wendy thought for a moment. “If we use hay bales…and something natural over the top. Maybe that won’t scare the mother off.” She looked at her daughter. “If the momma doesn’t come back tonight, we won’t have any choice but to try to feed them.”
Leah helped her mom construct the shelter with hay walls and a thatched roof made from bamboo stakes, and pronounced it the best bunny house ever. “Tomorrow, can I hold one?”
“We’ll see, babe,” Wendy said, her brow furrowing. “Let’s just hope the mom comes back.” As they walked back toward the house, Wendy remembered the two cottontails she’d seen at dusk a few nights ago, cavorting, peforming aerial acrobatics like furry little gymnasts. They’d been so sweetly playful that she’d called her husband over.
“Mike, you’ve gotta see this. These rabbits are having a blast. It’s like they’re playing tag.” As the evening sun slanted golden across the backyard, the pair alternately played, grazed, and even flopped sideways in the soft grass, as though they hadn’t a care in the world.
She probably gave birth a few days before, Wendy thought. Now that magical scene had more meaning, as though the rabbits had been reveling in the sheer joy of bringing life into the world; a ‘look what we did’, self-congratulatory celebration of the birth of their children.
As she turned in for the night, Wendy couldn’t get her mind off the bunnies. I hope I haven’t ruined things for that little family, she thought.
(to be continued)
