Critter Capers
by Margaret Stinson
My house backs unto a school yard which in turn is connected with a city park. These parks are normally teeming with school children, dogs, skateboarders, football, baseball and soccer teams, walkers, bikers and teenagers partying between midnight and 6 AM. It is also teeming with jackrabbits.
A few years ago, I was introduced to a particularly destructive gang of teenage jackrabbits. Like some other teenage gangs I have run across, they did not seem to have any concern for the rights of others and were constantly wrecking property.
In the evenings, I would go into the front yard and weed my flower beds and would discover some plants that I thought had fallen prey to some sort of plant disease. It was a few weeks later I discovered it was not verticillium wilt but cute little bunnies.
One morning shortly after I woke up, I looked out my kitchen window and noticed that my young bean plants looked much different than they had the day before. I ran outside and discovered some creature of the night had eaten all the leaves. I was almost rabid. I checked the front yard and discovered lots of little raisin-like presents on my front sidewalk and realized I had been the victim of ravenous rabbits.
After that discovery, I kept a close eye on my yard and when a rabbit was spotted, I went scurrying out the side door, screeching threats and chasing the varmints back into the park. The leader of the gang, the one with black on his ears (indicating a black heart perhaps), would stand his ground for some time before the crazy woman wielding a wooden spoon drove him into the bushes.
One of these altercations happened in the early hours of the morning, and I gave chase in my housecoat. After walking back from the park (in my bare feet), I checked the windows of the adjoining houses to make sure my neighbors hadn’t seen my ridiculous display.
One of my sons even put out an array of carrots, celery and lettuce on the front lawn, in an attempt to keep them away from my garden but they turned their cute little noses up at the store-bought stuff. They wanted fresh.
After a few weeks of this war between woman and beasts, I noticed the nocturnal activity lessened and finally stopped. I guess their parents had The Talk with them and had grounded these youngsters.
Since then, I pay special attention to my plants and am always on the lookout for the younger brothers and sisters of this clan, but to date I have not had a repeat performance of this chicanery.
And no, I do not dislike bunnies, I happen to think they are very cute and cuddly. As a matter of fact, this is another one of my special memories of the animal world.
