A Prayer for the Easter Bunny

I may be one holiday behind, but it will make sense in a moment.

Richard is in kindergarten. This is one of the pages from his "All About Mom" book he put together for Mother's Day.

"I wish I could buy my mom a rabbit trap."

You may wonder why my son is under the impression that I want a rabbit trap, so here is some background.

One

I discovered the first rabbit arrival on April 3rd as I turned out lights in the basement and wondered how many days they'd been left on. The tiny rabbit sat alone in the window well. I wished the bunny a good night and said, "I'll most likely kill you in the morning." 

No, I was still nice back then. I told him he'd probably die of natural causes. (I assume all rabbits are male so that I don't have to immediately see them as carriers of an invasion force).

Three

Next morning where I should have found a dead bunny, I instead found three living bunnies. I invited my children to come admire them through the window, and I have to admit, they were very cute. We gave them fresh grass (I happen to know they adore fresh grass as their predecessors have devoured most of of my lawn), water, and shelter. So I didn't feel guilty for keeping them away from my lawn without...you know...actually *releasing* them into the wild. 

Two bunnies visible, one hidden under leaves.

Plus, it felt like an early Easter present to have three bunnies for my three children to safely admire. 

Four

Well, I guess the baby I am expecting felt left out, because the following Saturday, I looked in our little terrarium to see a fourth baby bunny. It felt like a good omen, so I just went along with it.

Six

But on Monday morning, my omen evaporated upon finding two more bunnies in two other window wells (we don't plan to have six kids). One was quite sprightly and jumped into the house when I opened the window screen to retrieve it with my gloved hand. Claire still points to the storage tote where it landed and gravely announces, "That where baby rabbit hided."

The other appeared to already be dead--huddled up and not moving. But I noticed it was still breathing. I set it close to the other bunnies and asked them to keep him warm.

When I checked on them a couple of hours later, I hoped the bunny was done with its dying process. But it appeared to still be laboring for breath, and I just couldn't stand it. Not when I was a nurturing, loving, caring mother. I would not stand by and let death win.

So I lovingly scooped the bunny up with my gloved hand and placed him on a grocery bag (it had been intended as the burial shroud). I then made a little mixture of sugar and water, found a medicine dropper, and went out to the back deck. 

[Do not tell my mother I handled a wild rabbit! I did the same thing when I was 7 years old, but at least this time I used gloves. I've come a long way.]

I propped the little fellow so that his head was higher than his heart. Just after he took each gasping breath, I slid a drop of my life-saving nectar into his cheek. I told myself the sugar water would slide down his little bunny esophagus and into his little bunny tummy where it would become a source of rescue for the poor creature.

I spent nearly an hour doing this. I was still in my robe. My children were still in their pajamas. It was after 11 when I decided I had done all I could. I put him and an old towel in an old plastic bowl, secured the top with netting--for I was demonstrating faith that he would soon be bouncing around--and then placed him in the most reasonable place possible for his convalescence: the washing machine. 

I care about the earth (I save bunnies, don't I?), but if ever there is a revolution led by environmental extremists, I will probably be sent to the guillotine before I will give up my top-loader. We've been through a lot together.

So I placed the bowl on top of the agitator and closed the lid. Perfect place for being inside without really being inside. My husband was working from home, and I couldn't bring myself to tell him how far I'd fallen in my pregnancy-induced sentimentality. So I put a note on the washer instructing the person opening the lid to not freak out. 

When I checked on him just before taking Richard to kindergarten, the bunny actually turned his head to look at me when I opened the lid. A miracle! He was on his way to full health.

I couldn't risk having him get jubilant in the washing machine, so I set him with the other bunnies in a warm spot with a warm rice-filled sock by him. He tottered a couple of steps and then made himself comfortable. Well, he sort of sprawled onto his face, but I could see that his will to live had been restored.

Five

When I was finally able to check on him before dinner, he was dead. I had gone to the trouble to look up diseases carried by rabbits or other small critters in the area. Squirrels and prairie dogs carry bubonic plague. Do you know why it's called the Black Death? You start bleeding out of every orifice, and your fingers and nose turn black and fall off.

Dear Mother Nature, what have I exposed my family to?

The disease rabbits in my area actually carry sometimes is tularemia, and it isn't nearly so dangerous. I had thrown my robe in the dryer to kill any fleas or microbes it may have acquired during my lapse in judgment, but still. We might be living on borrowed time.

One

Over the course of the next week or so, despite grass and other delicious vegetables we gave them, all but one bunny died. I scooped them up with doubled-up grocery bags and deposited them in the trash bin. I didn't really have the energy to feel bad for them.

I was, instead, spending a lot of energy chasing the adult rabbits out of my yard. One morning, I opened the curtains to discover a rather nervy bunny sitting in a tall flowerpot, nibbling my pansies down to nubbins. 

Did I run into the front yard, in my white, fluffy robe, yelling, "Get out! I hate you!"?

Yes I did. And my toddler chased after me repeating the same words. We make a great team.

I decided it was time to get serious. (The last time I supposedly "took my gloves off" to fight them, I had taken all the trimmings from rose bushes and stuffed the rabbit burrows with thorned sticks. I thought they would act as a barb wire fence to keep the bunnies out. They just pushed through and said, "Ah, thanks for the back scratch." We've begun filling in the burrows with cement.)

At the point that I still had five bunnies in the window well, I borrowed a humane trap from my friend. The back yard has chicken wire all along the lower portion of our split-rail (vinyl) fence, so rabbits shouldn't be able to get in, but they do. And then they make babies. One baby had managed to resist the Siren cry of the window well covers, so it was living happily under the deck and came out a few times every day to eat my yard.

Seven?

I decided to trap that rabbit. On April 12 I set up the trap and laughed fiendishly as I anticipated the undoing of rabbit number 7. Once caught, I would put it and the surviving five in a tote, drive them out to the country, and dump them in a field to take on owls, foxes, hawks, and snakes. Then I would laugh some more.

After a week or so of trying various locations and a variety of foods for bate, I realized that this was no dumb bunny. Its descendants would likewise carry a gene for innate avoidance of man-made traps. Let the invasion force begin.

One

On April 23, we were down to one bunny in the window well. I realized that a new batch of bunnies had hatched under our front porch. Something would scurry under the porch when I went out to water my pansy nubbins, . So we set the trap directly facing the entrance. The bunny couldn't possibly avoid this set-up.

We returned from my brother's birthday party to see a bunny in the cage! Glory halelujah!!

But as I approached it, the bunny ran back out. It had never gone in far enough to activate the pressure plate, so the door was still open. 

Again it went into the trap the next day, and again it darted out too soon. It may have been saved from a grisly death had it just succumbed to a humane trap.

Two

April 25 and I was now a habitual window well checker. No matter what the forecast said, any night seemed to be a good night for rabbits to rain down into the the window wells. But when I saw a tiny bunny in with our now adolescent-sized terrarium dweller, I knew something was terribly wrong.

His fur was rumpled, and he was shaking. Blood oozed from a gash in his neck.

"Oh no! Did something attack you before you ran for the window well? Did something cut you on the way down?"

And then I watched in horror as older bunny lunged at tiny bunny and began ripping out clumps of hair. I pounded the window to scare it off. I had to rush upstairs to get Caitlin off to school, but the repulsion of that scene stayed with me.

Richard heard about the plight of the little bunny and asked if he could see it. Hoping it was dead, I brought my doubled grocery bags. The sight that met us was freakish. The older bunny had ripped all the hair off from around the little one's eye so that a large eye bulged from red, oozing flesh. 

I knew what I had to do. I scooped up the quivering creature and told Richard to stay inside. I tied the bag twice and walked to a flat stone. Then as I covered my mouth so I wouldn't scream, I swung the bag hard into the stone. And then once more to be sure. I was now shaking as I dropped the still bag into the garbage, to be collected that day.

And that was when I looked around my house and saw Easter bunny décor on my wall. It was like I had erected a shrine to the devil himself. How could rabbits have become the non-religious symbol for Easter and springtime? Did no one realize they were harbingers of death? Bloodthirsty little monsters bent on the destruction of plants and animals alike? And despite what I said earlier about hatching, they don't even come from eggs.

Zero

I couldn't look at Killer Bunny, but I still asked the kids to throw grass down to it. When we had a typical Colorado spring snowstorm on April 28, I decided I could let nature take its course. By April 29, Killer Bunny had died from exposure. I couldn't help feeling that the snowstorm was merciful compared to what I wanted to do that thing. Drawn and quartered, skinned alive. So much for nurturing, loving, caring mother.

Two

On May 1 another rabbit storm left us with two tiny bunnies in a window well. The kids and I took them to an undisclosed location and released them. 

The day before I went into the hospital for my extended stay, I could see these three fellows from my kitchen window.

They are cheerfully eating my yard while my husband is too busy playing mom to fill their burrows with cement. I am told that we have yet another dead bunny in a window well. No one seems to have the guts to throw it out, so it might still be there when I get home some day. It is our tenth window well dweller this year.

One of my back fence neighbors is quite against the harming of any living creature. One time when she and I were chatting, I told the kids they were allowed to kill any grasshopper they could catch. She went pale and said she could never harm a living thing. So if someone could keep her busy at her front door, I'd appreciate it. If my aim improves, I plan to start pegging the rabbits with bricks.

Easter Bunny, you are no longer welcome in our home. Do you know what animal I think should replace you? An earth worm. It breaks down decaying material so that plants can grow in fertile soil. It provides food for the beautiful Robins and their hatchlings in the spring time. 

Four baby robins in our satellite dish.

I have never seen earth worms attack each other. They have never eaten my flowers or spoiled my lawn. When I retrieve them from a puddle and put them somewhere safe, they don't transmit diseases to me (I think).  

So next Easter, let's dispense with the chocolate Easter bunnies. Let the kids eat gummy worms.