Bunny Funeral

I was in the backyard filling the bird feeders when I noticed Shaggy was very busy at… something. I called to him but he didn’t turn around, so I knew that probably mean nothing good. I walked over there to find him pulling a tiny baby bunny out of a nest in the ground. I quickly pulled him away from the hole and realized that my initial fears were unwarranted. He hadn’t hurt them. They were already dead. He was removing them from the hole so that he could get at the blanket of fur that the mother had lined the nest with. I pulled a wad of it out of his mouth. I can’t imagine it tasted very good, but knowing everything else he tries to eat, I’m sure he thought different.

After taking Shaggy back to the house, I went back and removed three more babies from the nest to join the two the dog had already extracted. I also grabbed all the nest material to remove any temptation for Shaggy to head back. A turn of the dirt by the flower bed and the bunny funeral was over. I filled up the nest and tamped the dirt down. I should have done that last year after the mother rabbit raised her babies successfully last year, but I hadn’t so she decided to try again. I suspect the foot of snow last week probably contributed to the babies’ demise.

Poor things.