Wildlife

Geof reported that earlier this week he saw a black snack in our driveway, and there is evidence of a snake hole that it's been using to come and go from underneath our garage.  Today I followed a giant turtle from one side of my house to the other, making many pit stops along the way to crouch in fear of the strange biped with the camera phone.

There's a cardinal family in our crape myrtle, and there has been an abandoned rabbit hole in our front garden.  We saw the rabbit making the hole one evening several weeks ago, and we were looking forward to baby bunnies, but it seemed that the hole was quickly abandoned.  I assume it was because of so many dogs and kids coming and going up and down the street (not to mention the snake and lumbering turtle).

Today the kids were playing briefly in the yard and I heard all this squeaking.  I chased the neighbor cat away and discovered this:

Our little hole was now covered with dried grass, fur fluff and mulch.  I could see the nest moving and hear the little squeaks.  I quickly called the kids over but gave orders for no touching, and then I proceeded to poke around with a twig (I did not touch anything with my hands).  Then this little guy popped out!

We have brand new baby rabbits!

Piper, the cat next door, was VERY interested and kept coming to dig around the nest and agitating the babies, so we had to call in the neighbors to remove her indoors.  Hopefully they will be safe from her for the time being.

 After some careful poking around in the nest, I'm pretty sure that there are 4 babies.  There may be more, but I decided to leave them alone rather than dig deeper, especially since they finally got settled once the cat was removed.

 Here's one of the babies after the cat had pulled him out of the nest - their ears are still flattened against their heads and they seem to wander toward the smell of the nest pretty quickly. Their eyes appear to still be closed.  We're going to keep a close eye on our little nest and keep our fingers crossed that the nest stays safe.  The kids can't wait for their next glimpse of the baby bunnies!

And for the record, these baby bunnies are way cuter than baby chickens!