Reflections on the Second Week of Summer – Blueberry Bunnies

Cottontail

“Do you want the good news or the bad news?” My husband tossed his wide-brimmed straw hat as if it were a frisbee. The hat landed on the kitchen table.

Expecting a cottontail had gotten through his garden fence and eaten bean plants to the ground again, I replied, “Give me all the news―good first.”

“You have blueberries to pick.” Spence toed out of his garden boots. “And a rabbit got into the blueberry cage. The gate’s pulled apart. I’ll fix it.”

While Spence guzzled a can of carbonated water, I fetched a picking bucket and, beneath the sweltering July Fourth afternoon sun, marched to the blueberry cage in the north garden.

PVC pipes formed the structure of the twelve by twelve foot cage around four blueberry bushes. Four foot high chicken wire wrapped around the bottom to keep raccoons out, and cover cloth draped across the top to keep birds out. We’d made a gate in the chicken wire by clamping one section to a PVC pipe with binder clips. Remove the clips, swing the wire, and you’re in.

Spence’s pulled apart gate looked more mangled to me. With teeth, claws, or body slams, a critter had crashed through the gate leaving a modern art, wire sculpture.

I unfastened binder clips, pushed part of the sculpture aside, and lifted my leg over the rest. Boing. I kicked the wire crumpling it more. We could fix the gate when I finished picking the blueberries.

Edging around each bush so I didn’t knock any green berries off, I plucked the purple-blue ones and dropped them into the bucket. Plink. Plink. Plink. Though the breeze billowed the cloth overhead, sweat rolled down my nose. I finished the fourth bush and stepped back to the third to check for missed berries.

Movement on the ground caught my eye. In case a garter snake had chosen that moment to pass through, I stepped back. Not a snake. My foot had kicked pine straw aside revealing the back of a baby mammal.

I stared at the furry brown back and skinny legs in a nest―a shallow depression in the ground

covered by pine straw.

Uh-oh.

The baby would grow, gnaw at the bark of my blueberry bushes, and gobble the low hanging fruit. I stared at the blueberries rolling on the bottom of the bucket. A half cup. The year’s harvest had yet to ripen. Blueberries for pies, cookies, oatmeal topping, and fruit salad hung green on the bushes above the nest. And the baby would wiggle under the garden fence to feast on Spence’s vegetables.

I stared at the opening I’d made with my shoe. The nest probably had more than one baby. I didn’t want to kill them. I wanted to move them―out of my blueberry cage and away from the garden.

Clutching the bucket, I dashed to the house.

Spence sat on the sofa and clicked computer keys in a tap dance rhythm. Three kittens slept in a pile beside him.

“I need your help.”

“Okay.” More tapping.

“A nest of baby rabbits or something is inside the blueberry cage.”

He groaned. “If its rabbits, we can’t move them.” He kept tapping computer keys. “I’ll be out in awhile.”

Can’t move them? Sheesh. I wouldn’t have thought he cared more about the welfare of the cottontails, devourers of gardens, than his crops.

I fetched my camera to take pictures of flowers while I waited.

Bunny Nest - Babbies Inside

Nature celebrated the Fourth of July with purple, orange, and pink―blossoming thistles, day lilies, and milkweed. I inhaled the sweet, heavy fragrance of the milkweed and focused my lens.

Still waiting for Spence, I ambled back to the blueberry cage for another look at the exposed baby. No baby in sight. Pine straw and rabbit fur covered the nest. Had the mother come back and covered the baby bunny while I talked to Spence and took photos?

When Spence stepped inside the cage, I let the camera dangle around my neck, picked up a pine twig, and brushed the straw off the nest. This time I exposed three babies. Eyes still closed, the bunnies wiggled their heads under the straw. The side of one furry body heaved up and down.

Spence studied them. “They’re rabbits. Leave the gate open enough for the mother. Let’s hope she doesn’t abandon them.”

He really did care more about the cottontails than his garden.

With the pine branch, I smoothed the straw and fur over the bunnies. Then I untangled the wire gate, reset it, and left an opening at the bottom. Leaving the gate open for the mother cottontail, left it open for raccoons too. They could rip branches off the blueberries or gobble the baby bunnies. To save the bunnies, I endangered them. For how long? Google would know.

Digging in with kitten claws, Rills crawled up my leg, over the laptop, and behind my neck. While he nibbled my ear with his sharp teeth―teething―and combed my hair with his claws, I stared at the computer screen.

Fur and closed eyes meant the bunnies were about a week old―still nursing. Within a week, they would venture out on their own.

Raccoons and birds could eat a lot of green berries in that time.

While I washed dishes after dinner, I gazed through the window above the sink. No cottontail nibbled clover in the yard or hopped into the blueberry cage. If the mother cottontail didn’t come back, I’d get my blueberries. But I would have to pick them with the stench of death insulting my nostrils. Yuck.

The next morning, Spence had news. He’d ambled along the tractor path below the north garden to empty the dehumidifier in the garage basement. When he rounded the old wood shed, the mother cottontail bounded out of the blueberry cage and into the milkweed patch. “Maybe she was leading me away. I hope she doesn’t abandon the babies.”

Early that afternoon, I drove home from lap swim and parked in the garage. Staying away from the blueberry cage, I walked along the road and over the house driveway to the porch. When I inserted the key into the front door lock, a streak of brown in the garden distracted me. I swiveled in time to see the cottontail hop into the milkweeds.

She reacted to me twenty yards away on the porch. Vigilant. She didn’t abandon her babies after Spence walked past the cage. Dedicated. My kind of mother.

This morning, three days after my first blueberry picking, I fetched the bucket and marched to the blueberry cage.

I opened the gate and cover cloth to a mess.

A critter had scratched the ground around the first bush digging a couple inches into the dirt and tossing pine straw in all directions. Two more bushes had disturbed areas underneath. A raccoon’s work. Had it found the bunnies?

Holding my breath, I giant stepped to the nest. Empty. No disturbed earth. No fur. No tossed straw. The raccoon must have hunted yellow jackets and grubs in the ground.

I exhaled so hard in relief that my knees bent to a squat and gave me an advantageous view of the low branches.

After picking two cups of blueberries, I latched the gate, leaving no opening for the cottontail, and walked to the south garden where Spence sliced ground cover fabric with his pocket knife.

“Do you want the good news or the bad news?” While the question hung in the air, I watched him plant a squash seedling through the cut fabric. He tamped soil around the stem, and I reported my findings.

Like the Beetles sang,“Ob-la-di ob-la-da life goes on . . .”

Hours later, Spence spotted a baby bunny hopping across the north lawn into the milkweed patch.

Milkweed