Stone Rabbit

While the streets might be dotted with dead deer, the lawns are littered with live rabbits.

A few days ago I stepped out the front door and saw a chunky brown rabbit right outside. I expected it to dart off at my next step, but it just stared dully at me with leaden eyes while I walked within two feet of it. I collected the mail and the paper, and stopped by the rabbit on the way back in.

”Go away, dude.”

He stared. Not a panicked stare. A bored get-off-my-lawn-lady stare.

I opened the door and realized why he hadn’t escaped: I’d blocked his warren access with a large rock in an effort to dry the leaky basement. 

”Just go around the side. Plenty of ways into your warren.” 

He didn’t budge. I went inside and deposited the mail and the paper. I got some coffee. I looked outside again. Still there. I opened the front door to say, “Act like a rabbit, dude,” and he bounded away.

The next day he was in the middle of the back yard, immobile. Gary speculated that He was a She, and she was sitting on a nest. 

The day after that I went to look at the peonies in the side yard. First, I noticed the mulch in the peony bed on my left blocked the warren entrance. And, there on my right, sat the fearless phlegmatic rabbit. I figured I’d see how close I could get, maybe into foot-nudging territory. When I was one step away the rabbit bolted, five bonus rabbits exploded out of the peony bed, and all six vanished into the neighbor’s yard.  

I exclaimed either “Jesus Christ!” or “Fuck!” — I hope it was “Jesus Christ” because I immediately heard my neighbor tell his four year old daughter to “look at all the bunnies, sweetie!” Sweetie and Dad were looking out of their open back door. 

We had a nice talk about how he’s never seen so many rabbits, and he suspects there might be a rabbit nest under his back porch. I didn’t tell him there is a rabbit metropolis extending from his porch to mine, and I had blocked off all the entrances but his. 

Comments

[Arlene]

Seems to be more wild life here in west Omaha, as well. Fox, coyotes, rabbits, deer Canadian geese on rooftops and lots of wild turkeys are all being reported on the Next-door ap. Myself, other than turkeys, I've only seen two wasps and a bumblebee.

[theQueen]

Arlene - was it the biggest bumblebee you’ve ever seen? There was one in my yard that looked like a dirigible.

[Arlene]

Probably the biggest. It was quite large. Also, the first bumblebee I've seen in decades.

[TheQueen]

Arlene - uh -oh -mine have a distinctive black abdomen. I think they’re carpenter bees. That’s trouble.
Do yours look like this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpenter_bee#/media/File:Carpenter_bee.jpg