On Tuesday, there was a tiny bunny in my front yard. It was so small that when my wife and daughter left for school, they didn’t see it. It was roughly the coloring of the picture shown.
I went out to investigate. It appeared to be dead. I got my snow shovel to remove it, only to discover that the creature’s nose twitched. Ah, so it’s alive, but it’s not moving. A healthy rabbit would have quickly scampered away. I imagine that it wasn’t attacked by an animal. Most likely, it was hit by a car and either flew or hobbled over to our grass.
I let it be for a few hours, then checked out the creature again. It was still lying on its side, with a couple of flies hanging around it. Dead for sure, right? I manipulated the shovel and could stabilize the bunny enough so that it could, more or less, sit up. It started nibbling on the grass, which, oddly, gave me a bit of joy.
I never had a rodent as a pet. No hamsters or white mice. We had cats and one dog. Some short-lived goldfish, I think. So I became surprisingly fascinated by this visitor. Why did it appear on MY lawn?
The next day, it appeared to be still hanging on as I went to donate blood at Albany High School, time #176; thank you very much.
I checked on the bunny after lunch, but it had died. So I carried it to the backyard, where I buried it. It was my “pet” for about a day, and yet I felt sad about its passing. Though I knew its injuries were so severe that it wouldn’t last for long.