The Rabbit Died

This afternoon we found that we have a rabbit nest in the middle of our backyard. Bob found it when, what appeared to be dog poop, moved. Upon further investigation he found that it was actually a baby rabbit. He looked more closely and found that we had a nest of 4 babies.

This nest is in the middle of our backyard. It is not hidden anywhere. It is smack dab in the middle of the lawn. The rabbit had been digging there for a couple days. Now we have babies.

I am of two minds on this, they are incredibly cute. But they are rabbits. We have a million gillion rabbits in our neighborhood. I don't really want anymore. They eat my flowers. They eat my invisible fence. They are a pain in the neck.

Bob can't bring himself to kill them. Killing animals is definitely a man job. I an man enough to deal with already dead baby rabbits, but not to kill them. So for now, we have a nest of rabbits, under a laundry basket so that Wiley, our dog, does not bother them. We will pull the basket up at night, when the mother rabbit comes to see them, and Wiley is in the house. I am told we are to do this for 4 weeks. I am not sure how the babies will like being captive for 4 weeks.

I went outside to show the kids the babies, and we noticed that one was dead. So, we are now down to 3 rabbits. Part of me hopes that being sniffed by Wiley will scare them all and they will die, then I won't have to kill them. I am not a mean person, but really, does the world need 3 more wild rabbits? Especially rabbits with a stupid mother. The middle of my lawn? I mean really how safe is that. They are lucky we didn't mow over them. We will see if the mother comes for them. If she does not, then we will call animal control.

I had a string (read yarn) across the nest, so I could tell if the mother can to visit. Well, when Bob put the laundry basket back on them, he didn't put the brick back on it. So, Wiley dug all the babies out of their nest and scattered them all over the yard. 2 look ok, but 1 looks like he might not make it... so we may have 2 tomorrow. While we are not trying to kill them, I think we may have a hard time keeping them away from the dog for 4 weeks.