Wild Cottontail Bunnies

 May 2019

One evening in May while we were all upstairs ready for bed I noticed Sophie was looking out the window. She was in full attention mode chattering and letting out a faint cry. She then jumped off the windowsill and ran downstairs. I followed her downstairs but wasn't able to see anything. 

The following night she did the same thing. Then a few days later we saw what all the excitement was about, a wild bunny!

The bunny had also caught Lila's attention. 

As the days passed by we noticed the bunny would drop by the evening. I would find her perched on top of the babies barrel. We had no idea how long she had been coming by so one day I decided to check the barrel. 

And I discovered baby bunnies. This was the second time that our backyard has been used as a nursery for wild bunnies. Look how cute they are!!

It seemed that momma bunny used her own fur to provide insulation. She dug the hole a good ways down and it tunneled to the other side of the tall plant. I think it's so amazing how God weaves knowledge into the animals brains so they know what it takes to survive. Amazing!

As the days went by and as I just kept my eye on the bunnies, one day I happened to see all 6 bunnies out of the hole. 

There were several times when I would only see these three together. I could see the other three still inside the hole. 

I did a bit of research and found out that wild bunnies tend to be on their own about five weeks after they're born. That's just crazy because they are still so little. 

One evening while I was watching television upstairs in my room I heard a loud thud downstairs. I went to check it out and Sophie had pounced on the window and had moved the blinds. I peeked outside and saw a black cat walking along our fence. I went back upstairs and then I heard a squeaking sound. I realized the cat was after the baby bunnies. 

The next morning I checked up on the bunnies and found only 5 baby bunnies. During the day they had jumped off the barrel and were scattered all around our backyard. I didn't want to interfere in case the mom came back for them. As it got dark we again heard another squeak. I felt so bad for them and decided that I should find them and bring them inside the house. I had Riley help me gather them up and as we tried to grab them one of them crawled under the fence and onto the neighbors yard. 

Two baby bunnies were killed by the black cat, one escaped and hopefully it survived and we did catch the remaining three. I felt bad because I didn't want the ones we rescued to die. I called the animal shelter and they don't take wild bunnies since they are native to WA and told us to just release them. 

I  placed an old towel inside the box and placed the three bunnies in there. The next morning we went to a feed store and bought Timothy hay but they didn't care for it so I did more research. Besides small pieces of carrots and cucumber skin I realized that they preferred cilantro. They would eat all the cilantro but they didn't care for the carrots. 

When they weren't eating they would huddle together in a corner and keep each other warm. 

One of the bunnies also liked to sit in the little water bowl I placed in the box. Thought that was cute. By this time the bunnies were about six/seven weeks old. We couldn't keep them because we have two cats plus I didn't want to keep them in a cage because I think that's mean given these are wild bunnies. And I didn't want to release them in our backyard because of the black cat that would still come by looking for them. So, we decided to release them in a large field that's covered with overgrown blackberry bushes and tall grass that's a few blocks from our house. 

We felt good about releasing them in that field. My husband had seen several other bunnies in that area so we knew that they would have a higher chance of survival there. 

I just can't take how cute they are. 

All the ugliness of the world can be best forgotten in the beauty of nature!