We had just finished putting the dishes away after dinner when Jim stopped dead in his tracks, and started to signal to me from across the kitchen.
“Laura, come here! This is the most amazing thing I have ever seen in my life!” Jim whispered excitedly, creeping closer to the back kitchen door. “Hurry, before it goes away!”
I quickly but quietly moved in front of where Jim was standing and looked out the window. Sitting in the middle of our deck, four feet from our back door, sat a teeny-tiny baby rabbit, sized somewhere between a furry tennis ball and a golf ball with ears.
“Oh my God,” my heart melted, as I flashed back to the time I was in sixth grade and I brought home a hutch-full of baby rabbits whose mom had been killed by a riding lawnmower. “Oh shit, Jim, Alle’s out there!”
What Jim couldn’t see from his angle was our family cat, Alle, sitting two feet in front of bun-bun. Oddly though, she was sitting calmly, almost maternally, watching the baby in a protective stance. But the last thing we wanted to do was take a chance: We had to somehow get Alle back inside and baby bunny someplace safe.
As I quietly opened the kitchen door, Jim moved towards Alle and I moved toward the bunny. Neither flinched nor made any attempt to move. Jim and I exchanged a quick look as he slowly bent down and scooped up Alle, who then contentedly sat in his arms. As the bunny made no attempt to move, I gingerly picked him up and cupped him against my tummy. After some minor protests, the bunny seemed to notice he was in a warm, quiet place, and I could feel his body relax and get comfy in his new location.
As Jim put Alle back inside, we sat down on the gazebo’s stoop. “We can’t show the kids,” Jim argued laughingly. “Jordan will want to nurse it back to health and we’ll have another house guest on our hands.”“We can’t not show the kids,” I told Jim, and handed him the little cuddle monster as I walked back into the house to call Jordan and Jamie to meet our little friend.
“Jordan! Jamie! Come out on the deck right away and bring a camera!” I yelled up the stairs. Thundering footsteps sounded from opposite ends of the second floor. “What is it?” they both asked almost simultaneously.
“Just come downstairs and hurry, Dad and I want to show you something,” I answered, and walked back outside to catch Jim talking to our new friend.
The moment Jordan heard the word “bunny” she shot directly back into the house in search of a box and towels to place it in, formulating her argument as to why we would need to keep and raise bunny as our own for his own good.
At some point Alle our cat made it back onto the deck, and primly sat behind Jim on the gazebo, quietly observing him holding her new friend. Again, her manner was calm and relaxed. She was definitely mellowing in her advanced age.
“Do the neighborhood animals have some sort of network system – stay at Casa Dralle, they’re really nice people?” I joked, noting that this little creature had to climb seven stairs to reach our back door and hop an additional fifteen feet.
As Jordan droned on and on in the background about dead rabbit mothers and orphaned babies and being lost forever and starving to death, Jim, Jamie and I looked around the base of our gazebo for a safe place to release our adorable little visitor.
As we all agreed to a covered area where the deck steps met the sides of the gazebo base, Jim carefully placed the baby in the higher grass at the edge of the deck. Instead of bolting away, as we expected, the little guy took his time, finding a bit of clover to nibble on before he made his way under the deck and quickly out of sight.
Give our regards to the possum, I thought, as we made our way back inside for the evening, debating what we would name him if he returned tomorrow night.
