Saving the little bunny rabbit

I saw our dog, Lucy, bolt toward our fence. She was incredibly quick and I immediately noticed Lucy was pursuing something. In a time span of less than 2 seconds I could hear a little critter making the pathetic sound of an animal that realizes it is in mortal danger.

Running toward Lucy I shouted, “Let it go! Lucy, let it go!”

She did.

The critter was a very young, very small baby rabbit.

At that point, instead of running less than a foot to slip in between the slats on our fence and right out of the yard—away from the dogs—the little bunny stayed in our yard and ran under a bush.

Lucy and now Finley, too, looked and sniffed vigorously under the bush. But while Lucy and Finley were on one side of the bush, the little rabbit ran out from the other side of the bush, across our patio and under some other bushes.

Lucy and Finley figured it out, ran to the other bushes and in a few seconds Lucy had the little rabbit again.

This resulted in more pathetic cries from the little rabbit and more yelling from me. “Let it go! Lucy! Lucy, let it go!”

…Come to think of it my cries were sounding more and more pathetic, too.

We were able to shoo Lucy and Finley into the house and I found the little bunny huddled in the corner of our outside basement door stairwell.

I picked up the cute baby rabbit and carried it over to the church. I thought, “Let me get Nadia’s advice on what to do with this little one.” I did not want to leave it in our yard which, as you now know, is patrolled by rabbit-sniffing dogs. Nadia loves animals and is very good with this type of challenge.

Nadia looked at the poor little creature, listened to my story and said, “Hmm, I don’t know what to do.”

I really thought I would get more wisdom than that. But, in all fairness, I didn’t have any wisdom up my sleeve, either.

We decided, after pondering the matter with great deliberation, to let the little one go under some bushes in the front yard. This is an area where our dogs never go. And it was not very far, hopefully, from the bunny’s mama.

The little bunny was grateful. I know this is true because about a half an hour later it sent me a very kind and lovely text message. Rabbits, in the wild, are not very smart about staying away from dogs but they are getting tremendously sophisticated when it comes to technology.

Dan Marler

Oak Lawn, IL