Rabbit

I was heading outside for a run tonight and saw the neighbor’s cat with something near the side of our house. The cat kills alot of chipmunks, so I headed over to see what she had. It turns out it was a baby rabbit. The cat ran away (because she’s a chicken and I throw things at her) and the rabbit looked unharmed. It was not much bigger than my fist. All brown, eyes open. There has been a rabbit sitting in the front yard all day and I thought that maybe that was the mother.

I walked next door and asked the neighbor about it. He said the cat has been killing baby bunnies all week. He came out to look at the rabbit and touched it to see if it was alive. It put its ears down when he stroked it so it seemed to be reacting normally. Just sitting motionless.

Looking outside now, I don’t see the big rabbit, but the little one is still there. No cat in sight. If I do see her, I will need to throw something big at her.

I read online that the mother rabbit is only at the nest at night, to avoid attracting predators to it. Its possible she will come back and look for the baby, although I wonder how far the cat dragged the baby to get it to our house.

This is almost as annoying as the time there was a chipmunk caught in a rat trap and dragging itself across our back yard.

I feel badly leaving the thing sitting in the middle of the lawn, waiting for the cat to come back and eat him. But I haven’t a clue where to move it to, even if I could move it. I tried calling an animal rehabilitator listed at the local DEC website, but no answer at this hour. The DEC and rehab sites generally say leave the rabbit there, unless its clearly injured. But even if its injured, there’s nothing I can do and I have to find a trained wildlife rehabilitator. Sigh.

So I leave the bunny there, skip my run, and keep peeping out the window to make sure the cat is not around.

UPDATE: Baby rabbit gone. Big rabbit gone. Cat sitting under car nearby and looking full. :(

This entry was posted on Monday, May 19th, 2008 at 9:02 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.