it is saturday and it is noon and i am mowing. i shove the
mower along the patchy grass in our small back yard, the only part of our property that is consistently level for
more than ten paces. i mow under the apple tree, a scraggly thing as old as the
house, close to a hundred, with only one gnarled main branch left. every year
the sweetie suggests cutting it down. every year our neighbor, a tree man,
seconds this idea, offering to get a menacing spruce out of the way in the
bargain. but the apple tree continues to hunch in the middle of the back yard, offering a
little shade for a circle of flat rocks we dug out of the ground when we buried our old dog max and his wayward ear. the tree
offers up misshapen, rusted apples each fall but right now it is flowering and
it is beautiful. when i mow under it and brush against a branch, small white
petals drop all around me. it is not a bad thing to mow a yard with an apple
tree.
i mow to the far end of the yard and am surprised when i turn
to head back and see the middle of the yard scattered with brown-gray fur. it was not
there when i mowed over that spot seconds ago and i know that means the small brown-gray
animal flung all over my yard must be tiny. mole, i think. rat. because i will
not feel as bad about accidentally mowing over an animal it is okay to hate. i
would like to think possum, but there is not enough fur scattered all around
for that.
i shut off the mower and walk toward what i think is the
epicenter of this disaster, understanding a little more clearly now how my own
dad felt way back when i was much younger, just before he brought his three
small girls a pile of even smaller bunnies to feed and love and tend to because
they had been orphaned. it is an
awful thing to look around for evidence of what you think you have done in a situation like this. there is fur.
fur everywhere like dandelion fuzz. but there are no tiny bones. no small bits
of animal anywhere. there is a hole in
the ground, though, just about in the middle of this ten foot debris field. i
stand over the hole and get my eyes as close as i can. there is brown-gray fur
in there over a breathing body. there is wiggling and squirming. there is the
smallest rabbit ear i’ve ever seen. there is an open eye, staring right up
where the blade had been a minute ago.
i run in the house and tell the sweetie. i tell him about
the fur scattered across half the yard, about how somewhere there’s the rabbit
that must have been in that fur but i don’t know where it is or what to do
about the ones crammed into the ground. i run back outside while he gets his
shoes. it seems to take hours for him to put them on and while i wait, i stare
into the ground and try to see how many animals are in there. the hole is
probably not much larger than my fist but i can see at least six separate
animals in there.
when the sweetie comes out he tells me to look away while he
tips over the mower to check for rabbit pieces. nothing. he asks for a box in
case we need to do something drastic like raise a family of orphaned baby
rabbits on our own and while i go in to get one he continues looking for rabbit
bits. when i come back out, he is standing off a bit from the nest, holding
something. he tried to run off, the sweetie tells me. he is worried an animal so
small will be scooped up right away by one of the eagles or hawks roaming
around or, more likely, by one of the neighbor’s all but feral cats. he holds
up the baby, sleepy, surprisingly comfortable in the giant hand. the
animal is almost unbearable. his ears look like furry orchid petals. his tail is a
tiny black point that quivers a little. the sweetie knows i will likely die if
i do not know how soft this animal is and he stretches out his hand and says,
he’s soft. touch him. i run one finger between those little ears and it is
true. the animal is velvet. **
because he is not frantic from having run over an entire
family of anything with a giant whirring blade, the sweetie is able to offer up
that i probably scattered a little fur blanket that was lying over the top of
the nest and have managed to keep my animal maiming to a minimum. the sweetie
puts the baby rabbit back in the ground on top of all the others and we gather
up as much of the fur as we can and pat it down on top of them. i put a rock
nearby so we won’t accidentally step on them. i keep my eyes peeled for those
worthless cats next door. the sweetie looks up some information and finds that the
little fur blanket is a real thing and that the mother will come back tonight
to hear wild stories from those babies about the monsters that attacked from
above, then gently tucked them into bed.
 |
| look closely. you can see an extra set of ears. |
we are content to know the mother will return but i would
feel better if i could see her. the sweetie says the interwebs promise a return
at night and we will just have to trust nature and the interwebs. this is not
my strong suit. i am meddlesome. so when i look out the window well before dusk
and see a fat rabbit hopping up the driveway toward the apple tree, i am
relieved. i yell to the sweetie and we watch her hop heavily on up the drive
and under the spruce, toward the apple tree. the sweetie runs up the stairs and
pretty quickly has a chair set up at the window on the landing. from there, we watch the big rabbit settle in over her babies. all of them. there is some
rustling around under her belly as the babies find her and eat. she flattens
and widens her body over them and settles in, chewing down stalks of grass.
**now, you may recall that back in the day, any wild animal baby touched by
humans was destined to die a horrible death alone, its parents watching the
ugliness from a safe and smug distance. but then some time around the turn of
this last century, well into my adulthood, the animals changed their minds.
their current policy is that no matter what humans do to try to “help”, animals go
on about their business, which, in spring, is caring for babies.
