Natural Encounters of Lagomorphic Proportions

There's one more thing about me that I should probably tell you right away: I. Adore. Bunnies. I collect bunny plushes. I most often purchase Blue Bunny ice cream (though my close proximity to their world headquarters just might also encourage that a wee bit). For years, I've dreamed of eventually having a pet bunny. Whenever I'm sad, my friends usually react by bombarding me with pictures and gifs of bunnies.

I just really, really love bunnies.

Cottontail rabbits, as the species of rabbit seen in the picture above is slightly-more-technically called (Sylvilagus, according to Google, if you prefer the scientific name), are fairly common in the Midwestern United States. Over the years, I've lived in Missouri, Illinois, and Iowa, and each of those different places has certainly had their fair share of the twitchy-nosed, fluffy-tailed garden thieves. It's a safe bet that pretty much any walk through the neighborhood in any not-yet-totally-urbanized area around here (suburbs, small towns, farmland, you name it) will result in a rabbit sighting, as long as the weather is decent. Even when it's bitterly cold out (as it was here in Sioux City when I took the picture), there's still always a chance that you'll see a member of the neighborhood's longer-eared contingent out looking through the snow for food. And oftentimes, the morning after a nighttime snow, you just might see their snowshoe tracks gently imprinted upon the top of the newly-fallen, icy fluff.

While I am absolutely enamored with bunnies, my mother feels quite differently about them, and to be fair, she has good reason. As I mentioned above, cottontails tend to be notorious garden thieves. No matter what you try to do to protect your garden, they will get in and they will eat your produce. It's a mission that they pursue with Liam-Neeson-in-Taken levels of determination. You can try planting a marigold fence around your garden--supposedly they hate the smell, but in my mother's experience, they just ended up eating the marigolds too. You can try building a chicken wire fence, but they'll just dig under it. At least once, we've had a rabbit actually dig her burrow in the middle of the garden so that she had easy food access right there at her front door.

As cliched and unbelievable as this probably seems, we pretty much had to give up on our carrot crop that year (not to mention the green beans).

As much as my mom claims that she can't stand the bunnies whenever she sees them out in her garden, given that she's never tried any truly drastic measures to get rid of them, I think she must have a bit of a soft spot for them somewhere. (Hopefully she doesn't read this and take it as a sign that she needs to be even more adamant in her anti-rabbit warfare.) Even if she doesn't share my love for the furry creatures, at least she can admit (sometimes) that they really are adorable. 

And honestly, that's good enough for me and my bunny-adoring heart.

The challenge for this week should be super easy--just get outside and spot a rabbit. Seeing one from inside doesn't count, unless you take the time to hurry outside before it runs away so that you can honestly say you saw it while outside. Feel free to let me know how achieving the challenge goes for you, or any funny bunny stories of your own (I'm always on the lookout for cute pet bun stories too). Good luck, fellow observers, and I'll see you again with more "tails" of nature next Friday.