Many babies came to visit, some to stay a while.
Someday, this four month old will get back at his two year old sister for putting the fuzzy crown on his head, but today he was okay with it.
Hats were the order of the day, for kids from Atlanta who came to their Ancestral Home.
They were a charming bunch!
Though dressed as a swimming wizard, he cast no spells. Their cousins, Jack and Mary (a.k.a "Mac and Jerry") from D.C. made their premiere visit to the Ancestral Home, too. Jack looks kind of familiar, but Mary's is an entirely new face. We look forward to getting to know them better in the years to come.
Though a mere six weeks, they were not the youngest babies on the old homestead. Local bunnies gave birth the day before the family reunion.
Oddly enough, we found them in the grass between our home and the next, near rose bushes looking more like the leavings of a big, loose dog than a nest of newborns. They were the size of small mice! There was no mother in sight, and we checked the bushes for a dead mother. No bunnies were found. We also lay a rhododendron branch over them for sun protection, and contacted
an authority on the natural world for guidance.
She reassured us that mother bunnies do leave their young during the day and also that baby bunnies are born unscented to protect them from predators.
Mother Bunny's choice of locations was rather out in the open, but just a few days ago we had noted two bunnies working on a nest beneath one of the trees in our front yard. It was a shaded, protected hole lined with rabbit fur. Doesn't that sound divine? We waited a night to see if Mother would move them there. She didn't.
Mother Bunny had clearly been to the hole overnight, though, as evidenced by the grass clippings being pressed down, rabbit shaped. She also had tended and fed her babies who still were in the open.
Jennifer also told us that it would be perfectly ok for all concerned if we moved the babies to the hole since it was close by. Mother would find them, eventually. If she didn't see them, she would hear their hungry cries.
Here is one of five baby bunnies. Four of them seemed hale and hearty, (hardy?) but one was not thriving. If you look closely at the picture of many bunnies, you will see one on its side. His skin hung loosely compared to the others, and he seemed unable to move very well. Son2 put them gently in the rabbit hole where they eagerly nestled into the fur, expectantly. We're guessing that it smelled like Mom.
After about 9:30 at night, when it was dark, we saw Mother Bunny cautiously approaching the original spot. She seemed easily spooked, so we left her alone.
The next morning, four bunnies seemed well fed and cared for, and one dead baby bunny was outside the hole. Now they are four days old and mother comes by nightly.
The six human offspring have since left. Their mothers were intrigued by the parenting methods of Mrs. Bunny and all continue to take an interest in the welfare of the four baby rabbits.
