Much to my chagrin, we have a … litter? … of new baby bunnies in the yard.
Yes, they are adorable. They don’t even have their little eyes open yet. We could see 3 without disturbing the nest.
Unfortunately, we found them when we heard one squeaking from the mouth of one of our dogs. We have two shih tzus and two yorkies. One of the shih tzus had the baby in his mouth but it was probably one of the yorkies that found them. The shih tzu dropped it on command and it didn’t appear to be hurt so we returned it to the nest where he burrowed in.
Now the dogs are relentless. Mama Bunny moved them as soon as we got the dogs back inside but she only moved them to the next shrub over.
For now, all pottying is monitored and no little dogs will be allowed to disturb them but I KNOW the little bastids will grow up to eat my landscaping and flowers. <sigh>
We had bunnies a few years ago. It was fun to watch them grow, but it was sad when they all left.
They were just itty-bitty little things - I thought there were only three at first, but it turned out to be five, in a little hole in the middle of the yard. We watched the dog carefully whenever she went out - like you said, no unsupervised potty time.
Good advice in that thread, BiblioCat. I don’t have a problem with (and have actually encouraged) the dogs to chase the grown up bunnies. We just couldn’t leave the defenseless little buggers to the dogs. I’m hoping Mama moves them to the neighbors with no dogs tonight.
Why do rabbits do that? We have this spot in the middle of the yard that rabbits keep trying to make into a burrow for their new litters, and we have to keep chasing them off from there and into the brush. If not, we’d surely have a lawnmowing incident at some point.
I’d love to know. That was the only time I saw a burrow out in the middle of the yard; usually they were under the shrubs along the sides. I was amazed that a rabbit would decide to ‘hide’ her babies right in the middle of the yard, especially one that smelled of dog.
I’ve mentioned here often before - I’m a soft-hearted animal lover and a vegetarian, but from what those little jerks do to my garden, I’d gladly make them into hassenpfeffer. Except that they make that horrible scream if injured. I think that little evolutionary path keeps them safe from people like me.
Now I’m worried that the bunnies that I’ve been seeing hanging around my lettuce have babies somewhere nearby, just waiting to get big enough to also invade my garden.
I release the hounds on the big ones (I call them off before they get dangerously close!), but I don’t know if I could do that to baby bunnies…
As stupid as rabbits are, I figure the ones that decide to set up housekeeping inside a fenced yard reeking of dog occup the shallowest end of the gene pool.
I’m not going to restrain my dogs from using my yard. What do you think - if I put the baby bunnies over the fence will mom re-house them? Or is it just a matter of time before something else eats them, in which case I’d be kinder to kill them quickly before evicting them?
This spring there were a couple of weeks that rabbits apparently thought our local dog park was a wonderful place to raise their young. Hardly a day went by that I didn’t have the pleasure of prying somewhat worse-for-wear bunnies out of my pups’ mouths. (Those got dispatched quickly.) Hell, I didn’t really care if the dogs supplemented their diets. I just wasn’t all that keen on the prospect of picking up the residua afterwards!
http://cuteoverload.com/tag/bunnies/ Scroll down the first page for pics of baby buns. Notice that there are several pages. Now, will someone please revive madrabbitwoman from her diabetic/cute overload induced coma?
That was how I found my first ever bunny burrow, after Mr. singular ran one over with the mower. And damned if the remaining bunnies weren’t the most squee-inducing creatures I’ve ever held.
Oh, and thanks, Lynn. I just wasted a half an hour on that site!
Back before the woods behind us got turned into a housing development, we used to get bunnies in our yard. We have dogs and my neighbor has dogs. Ma Bunny was definitely on the shallow end of the bunny gene pool because she blatantly ignored all of the safe wooded areas and areas outside of our fences where she could have easily made a bunny litter. Instead, she made her litter on the side of our yard, inside the fence and well inside of dog territory. We discovered the first one when we went out to see our dog throwing something into the air, which turned out to be a baby bunny (it died). We tried to keep our dog away from the bunnies, but she still managed to get another baby a few days later. The other babies finally made it out of the nest, and went into the neighbor’s yard, where they promptly became food for her dogs.
The next year, Ma Bunny built her nest in exactly the same place. This time, we decided to try and save the bunnies. We called up the local vet, who warned us that baby bunnies are notoriously difficult to keep alive. We left them in the nest as long as we could, but when it became apparent that they were just going to end up as dog food again we rescued the bunnies and put them in a small cage. Our vet gave us good advice, but the bunnies lived up to their difficult reputation and died.
Dumb bunnies. There’s a reason they reproduce, well, like bunnies. Fortunately, Ma Bunny never made a nest in our yard again.
I know this isn’t GQ, but do you have cite for this?
I’m assuming you’ve simply exapanded on the old “touching a bird’s nest/baby bird will cause the parent bird to abandon the nest because it ‘smells like humans’” myth. Cite.
When we had bunnies, my kids handled them a few times. Okay, I did, too. I couldn’t resist. They were just so damn cute. Mommy Bunny always came back to them.
Yesterday I started this thread about our new baby bunnies. I went out this morning and took pictures and I think they’ve doubled in size overnight.
Mama Bunny moved them after the first incident with the dogs. We thought that she had moved them out of the yard only to find out that she moved them to the next shrub over. When the dogs found the second nest, she moved them back to the first nest…:rolleyes:
At any rate, now that we know they’re still in the yard, the dogs are on leashes until they’re big enough to fend for themselves.