Foxlily

There was no sign of the baby rabbit this morning.

Before I let the cat out, I waded into the brush and high grass at my neighbor’s fencerow, where I’d put the little creature last night.  Nothing.

I’ll never know, of course, whether he escaped or was taken;  but perhaps I gave him a chance, such as it may be for a wild rabbit, and one barely weaned.

Yesterday was as fine a June day as anyone could imagine:  turquoise sky, fluffy clouds, nice breeze, and not too hot.

I went to Yoga class; then to Farmer’s Market for a big bunch of fresh mint and a few local vegetables (a couple of “candy” onions;  tiny, tender yellow squash; and two beautiful vine-ripened tomatoes), all for $5.00;  then home to complete household tasks and play with the dogs before going horseback riding.

Just as I was going to get my saddle, I heard a high-pitched cry and saw my black cat Simon rushing out of my neighbor’s field with a wriggling scrap of fur in his mouth.

I’ve lived in the country long enough to have lost considerable sentimentality about the processes of nature.  I know I can’t save everything, and that sometimes it’s better not to try.  I don’t blame the cat for being an efficient predator, obviously thinking of rabbit tartare.  He was, after all, brought here to discourage mice, a job he learned quickly, despite having spent the entire eight months of his life till then in a city animal shelter.

Knowing all that, I still dashed to the cat and demanded that he drop the rabbit.  To my surprise, he did.

The  tiny rabbit did not resist when I picked it up.   It sat quietly between my hands as I carried it to the house and found a box and towel for hospital quarters.

I found no injuries, but wasn’t sure what to do next.

Luckily, a Facebook friend was able to refer me to a retired wildlife rehabilitator in a nearby town.  This woman, Alice, proved to be kind, practical, and a font of knowledge about wildlife.

She taught me more about rabbits during our brief conversation than I had learned in all my years so far.

She said that rabbits, like deer, are born without scent. This keeps predators from finding them.  The mother lines a grassy nest with her fur, to hide and warm the babies.  She does not stay in the nest, as that would draw predators, but returns every day or so for nursing.  The white spot on a baby rabbit’s forehead, like a fawn’s white spots, is a temporary mark that disappears as the creature matures.  By the time the rabbit leaves the nest and begins to live on its own, the white spot is likely to have dwindled to a scattering of white hairs. At this stage, the young rabbit may try to follow its mother, but likely can’t keep up.  In the early days of venturing from the nest, the young rabbit is very vulnerable to predators, such as my competent cat.

Alice said that since this rabbit had gotten to about the size of a large lemon, it was more than likely on its own, even though its head-dot was still prominent.

Alice’s advice:  recheck for wounds, and  gently wash any punctures with soap and warm water;  wait for evening, and let the rabbit go, somewhere  near cover. (Later in the evening, another former wildlife rehabber who’d been riding horseback in Pennyrile State Park all day got back to me and echoed that advice).

Alice said that rabbits are both delicate and tough.  Susceptible to physical and emotional shock, resistant to human intervention, sensitive and light-boned, they nevertheless sometimes survive extraordinary situations, such as being whooshed through a lawn mower and somehow emerging unminced. What to do in that situation:  find the nest you’ve just mowed over, replace the surviving rabbits,  cover the nest with grass, and leave it alone.

(Alice also told me, as an aside, that she was watching her favorite mockingbird eat oranges from a feeder in her yard. Mockingbirds, members of the reclusive thrush family, can be quite elusive.  Alice says hers has gotten used to seeing her around, and, if not exactly eating from her hand, tolerates her presence within several feet.  The mockingbird had recently brought its three young ones to the citrus fest, and taught them to eat oranges, too.  According to Alice, they prefer navel oranges).

Finding no wounds on the rabbit, I settled him, still docile but very alert, into a deep box and set it in a quiet corner of the house, to wait for darkness.  Then I resumed preparing to ride.

On the way to the barn, I checked the killdeer’s nest, which is now a puzzle to me.  The mother bird has been sitting on these four eggs (sitting, at least, between bouts of histrionics designed to draw predators away from the nest) for over three weeks.

This seems an unusually long time to me, though I know that killdeer and other ground-dwelling birds spend longer in the shell than some other birds, such as robins.  The baby killdeer have to be ready to fend for themselves as soon as they hatch and dry off;   the parental care mostly occurs before hatching.

This killdeer chose a good nesting spot, right in the middle of the field we call our yard, next to an old stump that’s been cut to the ground.  We noticed the nest early on, and left higher grass around it for cover and coolness.  Unlike killdeer in previous years, nesting nearly on the blacktop farm lane or in the middle of the horse pasture, this one has avoided several obvious hazards.  Egg-stealing predators haven’t raided her nest.  But the eggs have been there so long that I wonder if they got too warm during some very hot days in early June, or too wet during later rains.  We’ll see.

It was such a perfect evening for riding that Jasper and I meandered till nearly dark.

Once I’d turned the horse out and brought the cat in, I carried the rabbit in his box to the grassy fencerow in the field where the cat had caught him. I let him go, with a pat and a prayer, in a thicket of honeysuckle and wild roses.  At least there, he’d have a chance of hiding from owls. Even a fox might not bother nosing through the thorns.   The bunny was tiny enough to move beneath the wicked branches.

Whether he lived through the night or not, the little rabbit was clearly enlivened, in that moment of being set loose. He scurried deeper into the grass and nestled down.  Another breath.  Another hour. Maybe a whole year, which is about all a wild rabbit gets, if it’s fast, and lucky, and sees the cat coming in time.