The Birds and The Bees (and Bunnies...)

The Birds and The Bees (and Bunnies...) My backyard seems to be the perfect place to raise a brood of bunnies! Baby bunny takeover

Although I wouldn’t call my raised garden beds romantic, the rabbits in my neighborhood sure like to use them in spring for their bunny rendezvous and subsequent nests.

The first year it happened, I found the bunny babies entirely by accident as I was loosening the soil and preparing the bed for planting. Thank goodness for garden gloves because as I reached into the corner of the planter to pull out a wad of dried leaves, the fuzzy layer underneath began to wiggle and move. I may have screamed. Who am I kidding? I definitely screamed. Then I promptly stuffed the leaves back into place and decided to leave that particular bed alone for another month until the bunnies had moved on.

I’m a busy mom of four, so I could see how Mama Rabbit had a lot on her plate raising those babies. Like putting food on the table (or in the hole), keeping leaves over their heads, constantly patrolling for pesky canines, and whatever PTA committee duties she inevitably got roped into at the last bunny meeting. Evicting her during this precarious time just seemed wrong. They stayed, and my lettuce and spinach went in a month late. No big whoop.

The following year, I was expecting it. I noticed the nest, left it alone, and planted my lettuce in a bed with no busy bunnies. Unfortunately, that was the Spring of 2018, or the Spring We No Longer Speak of Because of All the Death. An unruly pack of raccoons wreaked havoc on our neighborhood that year, taking out those bunnies and a nest of baby chickadees in a birdhouse in my backyard the same week.

I don’t know that I’ve fully recovered from that