A turn for the worse

I am sorry to report that the rabbits did not make it. They were fine Thursday night. Yesterday there were several heavy spells of rain, and when I got home from work and checked on the nest, there wasn't any movement. As I shifted aside the sodden grass and fur, I found that all the babies except one had died. I don't really know for sure, but I'm guessing the hollow filled with water temporarily and they drowned, they suffocated when the wet nest lining got packed down around them, or they simply got too cold. Yesterday was not the greatest day to start with, and pulling six tiny dead bodies out of that hopeful little nest made it pretty close to awful.

There were seven babies in all, and only one, the one closest to the top, was still hanging on. I buried the dead ones. I couldn't bear the thought of leaving the live one in with his cold and quiet siblings. I was hoping that the mother would come back and would keep tending the last little guy. I put some dry leaves in the nest, and then an old dishtowel. There was more rain coming, so I folded the towel over to create a sort of canopy and then covered that with more leaves, hoping the rain wouldn't soak down into the towel. When I checked on the last rabbit a few hours later, he was still breathing. If he died, I reasoned, at least he would die warm and dry and protected.

I'm not sure if the mother ever came back. When I took Indy out for his morning walk today, I stopped by the nest and found that the last baby had slipped away. I haven't buried him yet, because I want to believe that I was wrong and that he was just holding still, not really dead. I know the loss of a handful of common rabbits is not so much, nothing that the larger world will ever notice. I know the mother will have more babies this summer, may already be on her way to getting pregnant again. I know rabbits don't have emotions and so the mother won't be sad about her babies dying. I also know that I truly wanted them to make it. I wanted with all my heart for them to grow strong and leave the nest to fend for themselves, even if it meant my garden was in constant danger of becoming an all-hours bunny buffet.

Much is made of the so-called "miracle" of life, and the baby rabbits felt like a manifestation of that, like a connection to the almost-unseen whirlwind of nature that we move through every day. As much as I regret their passing, I don't regret that they were here or that they so briefly caught hold of my interest and my heart. They added a bit of wonder and excitement to my little slice of the world, and that is not so common.