Aieee!! Aiee! Aieeeeeeeeee!
[Day One]
It turns out that a bunny can scream bloody murder. If you've ever stepped on a cat, a screaming bunny sounds at least fifty times worse.
I learned this the other day. Babe-O and I were out in the backyard sitting on a big blanket in the grass. She was playing with her blocks and watching me throw the Frisbee for the dogs. Then out of nowhere came this ear-piercing Aieee!! Aiee! Aieeeeeeeeee! sound from behind us. Babe-O's eyes snapped wide open and she started flapping her arms and squealing, apparently sensing excitement afoot.
I scooped her up and spun around to find (big goofy golden doodle) Maggie Mae bouncing around with a whole litter of tiny bunnies scattering in different directions underneath her. But that wasn't the source of the screaming.
The screaming was coming from (cocker spaniel) Lola's mouth, where the unluckiest baby bunny was trapped.
I screamed at Lola. Babe-O screamed at Lola. Maggie barked at Lola.
I ran inside, unloaded the baby on Mom-O, and ran back out to Lola, who was still clamped down
on squealing rabbit.
I yelled at her to drop it, and sure enough, she obediently did. The dogs ran inside as they were told and Bunn-O scampered off to safety.
With the dogs locked inside, Mom-O, Babe-O, and I walked the yard looking for any casualties. Bunnies were nowhere to be found, but we did manage to locate their den (hutch? hole? gazebo?). We fluffed it back up and went about our business.
[Day Two]
The next day, I took the dogs out on their leashes to pee in the morning and then went to work. A few hours later, I get a phone call from Mom-O indicating that yes, bunny screams are terrible, and yes, they can be heard from the yard even if all the windows are closed. Lola had found another rabbit, terrorized it, and let it go as instructed. From then on we were back in leash mode, or at least stay-out-there-and-keep-Lola-away-from-the-nest mode.
We did some research online and determined that the rabbits were old enough that they were starting to venture out on their own with only occasional visits from their mother. It said that we could move their nest up to ten feet away by digging a hole and transplanting all their fur and grass and stereo equipment and stuff. The only problem was that the only spot that would be any good within ten feet was in the neighbor's yard on the other side of the fence. The only place in our yard that we could put them would have been the front yard, but that was too far away. So we figured we'd just monitor the dogs until the pain in the ass (spoken affectionately) bunnies left on their own.
[Today]
Today I was out in the yard again with Babe-O and the dogs and Lola again found one of the bunnies hopping around outside of its hole. I started squealing as soon as it spotted her and she never got her paws (or teeth) on it. Babe-O was again excited, shrieking and flapping her arms. Only this time, we found a casualty. Not sure what happened to this one – bird attack, lawn mower, who knows – but it didn't seem like the work of the dogs. Still, Mom-O and Babe-O and I walked the yard again to make sure there were no injuries that needed to be addressed.
We found the one that Lola has scared and wanted to make sure that she hadn't managed to hurt it, too. Before I could grab him, Bunn-O jumped through the fence lattice and bolted into the neighbor's bushes. He was about three inches long and you would think that a bunny bolting through the fence into oblivion would be the end of the story.
Mom-O lovingly pointed out that Lola could have hurt it, I failed to catch it when I had the chance, and if it was going to die a slow painful death somewhere, then may I be haunted for all my days by phantom bunny screams in the night.
Sigh.
I reluctantly hopped the fence and chased after this little guy, who admittedly looked like he might have a bum leg.
After a while it became pretty clear that I wasn't going to find this tiny thing on my own, so we called on the only one of us with a proven track record of bunny capture. Mom-O put Lola on a leash and came around to the neighbor's yard with me. After about ten minutes of sniffing, Lola found the bunny. She was super-obedient and cornered it against a plant for us while I scooped it up.
Babe-O watched intently and shouted occasionally throughout.
The bunny was fine, so we brought it back to our yard. We let Babe-O look at it and touch it once before running her inside to wash her hands so she didn't catch suburban bunny fever or something like that. Then we put Bunn-O back in his hole, which seemed to make him pretty happy.
By then it was bath time, so I went and did that before going back out to deal with the dead one. In case you're wondering I gave it a proper burial (in a bag of grass clippings) and will honor his memory (by setting him out on the curb on trashday).
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