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Baby Bunny in Snail Haven

Snail Haven is what we call our family home sort of jokingly. The name came from when I was a kid and every time it rained, a whole bunch of snails would show up in our garden. On the front stoop, on the sidewalk, everywhere! Snails of every color – striped snails, dark snails, light colored snails – you get the idea. And we’d have to go out of our way not to step on the poor little guys.

Now some people might try to get rid of them with slug repellant or salt or some other mean thing, but I kind of liked them. I would warn everyone as they entered or left the house where to step to avoid that awful pop-squish that meant you’d just murdered and destroyed the home of a poor, defenseless snail who had been minding his own business, sliding along on his way somewhere. While I wasn’t overly fond of slugs, snails are kind of cute because, as my Mom always put it, “they carry their houses on their backs.”

We ended up buying a lot of snail stuff. My Mom would get little snail planters and garden figurines because she knew I liked them. She even bought me a piece of art that featured a snail shell house one time. I’ll try to get a picture of that sometime to show you guys. It’s cute!

So snails were safe at my house. Now, over 20 years later, I’m back living in the old family homestead in the wild suburbs of New York City. There aren’t that many snails here anymore and I really don’t know why. Nobody did anything deliberate to kill them, but we do have a lot more birds nesting in our backyard, so maybe they’re being eaten by the birds. It’s possible, I suppose.

Now, however, we have a new visitor to our little patch of garden. For the past few days, a baby bunny has been in my garden almost every time I go outside. I weed and he hops out of the tall weeds a few feet away to hide by the forsythia bushes. I water and he hops away from the drops when they get to wherever he’d been hiding. I go out to put my houseplants out for the Summer and he’s there, looking at me from a few yards away.

To give you some idea of the magical nature of this bunny’s appearance… in the 40+ years my family has owned this house, there have NEVER been bunnies here. NEVER. Then, last year, all of a sudden, a single bunny was seen living in the yard diagonally across the street and about two houses down (I live on a corner). He used to hop all around and we’d see him in other people’s yards and occasionally in our yard, eating the plants. I even started putting carrots out for the little guy, hoping he’d hop on by. I equated the new arrival of the bunny in our neighborhood with the departure of my Mom. We called her The Energizer Bunny and I always sort of thought maybe she had something to do with the sudden appearance of a bunny just a few months after she passed. Like she was trying to say “I’m still here,” or maybe “I’m still with you,” or something.

I’ve always believed there’s no such thing as cooincidence, and I know Mom would have LOVED having a bunny in her yard. She put up a half dozen bird houses and loved to watch the baby birds in the houses and nests in our trees and bushes. She loved her garden and nature. She would feed the birds all Winter, when food was scarce, and I’ve done the same.  She would let the squirrels eat the birdseed because, after all, they need to eat too. And she loved my fish as if they were her own. She had great compassion for animals and loved to watch them, though we never kept pets (except my somewhat recent foray into fish-keeping, which was started by an outdoor pond we set up in her garden, actually).

So this year, as is predictable when talking about rabbits, there are a lot more bunnies in the area. I’ve seen up to three at one time. I’m not really sure where the baby bunny who keeps showing up in my yard lives, but I’m hoping maybe he’s considering moving in here. It’d be almost like having a pet but without the work. I managed to get a photo of him today to post. Isn’t he cute?