Heaven help me, I killed a baby rabbit, and I feel lowdown. Outside my studio/office/garage at our Melrose home is a patch of grass and greenery about 15 feet square, bounded by a cinder block planter and concrete curbs that define part of our driveway. Nothing to admire there. Just a variety of opportunistic grasses and weeds, most of which look pretty enough often enough. I let it grow uninhibited in April and May when it produces pollinating flowers. After June, I keep it mowed. Unless I let it get shaggy, as I did in July. So on Saturday, I took 20 minutes to cut the grass with my electric string trimmer.
I was almost done making swaths through the rather dense grass when, to my horror, I saw a small furry something writhing near my feet. Its white belly was exposed to me and it was struggling to turn over. Then I recognized it as a tiny bunny. I was wearing heavy leather yard gloves so I gently rolled him over in my palm to have a look, and I saw there was blood. I cradled him for a few minutes. I decided based on my crude anatomical observations that it was a male. I felt his heartbeat relax and his breathing approach some kind of normal. He was in shock and traumatized, a warm and gently trembling egg sized bundle, brown with black flecks, just like all the other rabbits we’ve seen in our yard over the years. His ears, half an inch long, lay pinned in panic. I saw that I’d injured his mouth a little bit. There was a cut and a skewed tooth, smaller than a poppy seed. The more serious wound was to his left hind foot. The string trimmer had cleaved it down the middle, and the foot was bleeding onto my glove, though it seemed to be congealing rapidly.
He was wounded but it was not obvious that he was doomed. All I could really do was rest him under the greenery where it seemed he’d been nesting and come inside to explore options. The local emergency vet told me the only wildlife rescue vet care in the city is Walden’s Puddle. You call and leave a voicemail for their triage system, and it cautions you that it will take time and they have limited resources. They are physically in Joelton, far north of where I am. And it was pretty clear to me that either this bunny would survive the next few hours and recover, or it would succumb to shock and die. Walden Puddle’s website did have a page of information about injured or abandoned baby rabbits. Don’t touch them (I had the gloves, and I didn’t have much choice it seemed to me.). Give space for mother to come back twice a day to feed and care for them. That’s about all I could glean.
Rabbits are venerated around our house. The Chinese zodiac attaches animals to birth years on a cyclical basis, and by lovely coincidence my (Chinese) daughter, my wife and my mother, three virtual generations, were all born in Rabbit years. We have a small collection of rabbit statues in our home. As for live rabbits, I’ve seen quite a few make use of my patch of yard over the years. I’ve even seen babies grazing there, but always in the spring. I was surprised to see one in late July, but what do I know about rabbits? Except that they’re lovely and adorable and a sign that our yard and neighborhood have some wildlife yet, even in this fast-developing area. I was mortified to have injured this promising little fellow, and I had no idea how dire the situation was for him. Plus I had to go. The only thing to do was to nestle him under the greenery right where he’d been and pray his mother returned. I imagined her licking the wound, lifting him by the scruff of the neck and carrying him to a safer bower along the hedgerow. I imagined a month hence seeing a gimpy young rabbit eating clover and lopsidedly hopping around. But this was fantasizing, as if out of some children’s book. Where were the other babies? Possibly this kitten (that’s what they’re called it seems) was abandoned? Moreover, heedless guys with weed whackers aren’t the only danger in the area. This small ball of muscle and fir could easily be taken by one of the hawks we have seen quite a few times feasting on mammal flesh out our windows.
Rabbits are said to do most of their mothering at night, so I let the situation be until Sunday morning. With grim anticipation I went to the pile of greens where I’d left him and was astonished to find him gone. I almost heard music switch to a major key. There was hope? No, not so much. After looking more carefully, I found him nestled against the block wall of the planter, gone from this world after what must have been a few short weeks. Cause of death: husband human with a lithium-powered yard tool. Then I thought of the countless landscapers deployed across the city on a daily basis, with their gas-powered mega trimmers and their riding lawn mowers rolling heedlessly over somebody’s yard that’s also something’s habitat. How many baby bunny nests have become mass graves? I’d never considered it before.
I buried the rabbit in the back yard just to offer some penance and dignity to the awful situation. I apologized to the rabbit and to the universe for not being more careful. Then I went back to the yard and looked again, carefully raking away yesterday’s cuttings. I found two more babies, uninjured thank god. One was at the very edge, under a small tangle of vines that I generally leave untrimmed. He was stock still but his eyes were bright and he made microscopic breathing motions. The other was burrowed into a more exposed area of grass and he didn’t look as healthy. He didn’t seem hurt, but he was deathly still with squinted black eyes. Needless to say all yard work has ceased until I can observe what happens with those guys. I really need mother rabbit to take it from here. Update: On Sunday afternoon, I checked and the weaker looking bunny had moved and looked better. Other guy seemed fine. Then about 5 pm, I checked again and both were gone. I’m optimistic that they’re with mom.
I wrote this down just to work out the darkness I feel about it and to affix the images of this vulnerable creature in my mind. Had I used my powers of observation earlier, I’d perhaps have noticed the new rabbit family outside my door. But I just mowed everything down as we humans tend to when something’s not to our liking. In a world teeming with violence and death, I can hardly bear the thought of contributing to that at all, even by accident, even in the sum of a few grams of baby rabbit.