Extremely Wild Kingdom

I am welcoming myself back to the blog with no excuses other than writers’ block. Let me tell you about this family of rabbits that live in my yard. Like Tony Soprano and his ducks, I like to think that my yard was a conscious choice of theirs for a living space. I love the rabbits and they are bold as brass, not afraid of anything, very trusting and I behave very gently around them.

So the other morning when I found one of the babies floating belly-up in the swimming pool, it was a moment that went like this: “La de da de da, it’s a beautiful da…AAAAH (clutch my chest). Now I have to, after an appropriate period of mourning of course, fish it out of the pool and deposit it somewhere. At that moment, my cell rings and it’s R and as I’m telling him what happened I decide it’s better if I stay on the line with him while I do this very unsavory thing. I use the skim net, pick it up and with a Banzai yuck, dump it over the fence into my neighbors’ jungle of ivy that they will not get rid of. It lands under the leaves and I no longer have to look at the train wreck.

All right. So a few mornings later, I’m reading the morning paper while sitting on the couch, and I look out the French door and see, perched on the railing of my deck, a freaking hawk. !
It stood about 2 ft tall and I almost thought it was something else, not a bird for sure. But then it lowered its head and there was no mistake about that triangle…that permanent, menacing frown. I tried to grab my digital and in the second I was gone it disappeared. I was so pissed that I didn’t stay to see it fly away.

Didn’t see the bunnies for a few days but then my lawn guy said he saw them when he was mowing. Then I saw one last night, happy as could be. Today, I walked out to shut the pump off and there it was again…a new bunny in the pool. Yack. Well, I know the drill now so I do the routine and I’m ready to walk in the house when I decide to check the skimmer to see if it needs to be cleaned and DA DA DA! There’s bunny number three floating in the skimmer. Now I have to fish him out by hand because I have nothing small enough to get in there…..I tell you, I had my heavy rubber gloves on, had to circle the yard several times before I could even attempt it, and finally knelt down and grabbed it…Tried to remember what Sebastian Junger said about how he overcomes his fears. Learn not to mind it, just do it. Don’t give yourself the luxury of minding.

Body count: 3
Hawk still unaccounted for.