The Stashbuckler

Thumper

28 May 2011 2 Comments

by thestashbuckler in Funny, Learning to be a Midwestern Gal

Many of you know me well enough to know that I’m not really a pet person. That actually might be an understatement. A better statement might be that animals terrify me. We never had pets as children, save goldfish.  When Wes and I met, we pretty much agreed that neither of us wanted the responsibility of a pet.  We decided we weren’t even going to be swayed by our future children’s pleas for cute cuddly things. I bet you can see where this is going.

Tonight when I got home, Wes was standing out in the tallish grass by the small creek on our property. We haven’t been able to mow that area that well since it has been pretty wet and muddy in the recent spring weather.  Apparently when he got home he took a perusal of the creek to see what was still too soggy to mow. He stopped when his foot landed less than 12 inches away from a baby rabbit. One that looked like this:

Yeah. He called me over, and we took a few photos of the little fella who was entirely too scared to move. Wes told me that mom had probably run off to draw whatever prey might have been out there away from the baby and would probably be back. We oohed and aahed a bit more and then headed into the house for dinner.

Except a few hours later I was still thinking about that baby rabbit. And about all the dogs and raccoons and possums and other things that troll around out here in the night time. And how little that baby was. So here I am spinning away on the spinning wheel and I say something like “you think that baby rabbit is ok?” Yeah. Uh-huh.  Next thing I  know I’m online looking up information about rescuing wild rabbits.

As it turns out our little guy was probably about 4-6 weeks old, old enough to live fairly independently from mom. It’s hard to tell based on the pictures, and he is pretty little, but he’s probably palm sized. His eyes and ears are open and he’s fairly alert. After consulting the Oracle (Google), we got a box with a towel, some dandelion greens (boy do we have enough of those!) and headed out. Poor little dude was still there.

This is where the story takes a twist. We both decided that we would take him in for the night, and look for a rehab shelter or for more permanent lodging tomorrow. But as Wes tried to grab him, he hopped off, through the creek, up the other bank and into the grass. Five hours in the same spot in the grass and then off he went. So of course I’m relieved, and a little wistful.

If you haven’t already, you can now have a good laugh at my expense.  Vaya con dios little Thumper!