Caring for wildlife

There was a bunny rabbit that moved into the back walkway of a neighbouring bunch of townhouses. Here’s a picture taken at 10 o’clock at night:

bunny picture

In sympathy for it in the bitterly cold weather, we starting putting out bits of carrot and broccoli stems every few days. As soon as it started getting dusk, it appeared at my front sidewalk for munchies.

Alas, after a few weeks of the globally-warmed December weather, it ceased coming, and there were no bunnyprints around the neighbours’ either.

Nature is a ruthless mother. Rabbits that don’t find a good winter feeding ground don’t make it to produce more dumb bunnies.

But wait, after two weeks of absence, it — or rather they — are back. Two bunnies. Appearing every evening at dusk. On my front porch, looking for those carrot bits. I’m corrupting nature, I know.

I have a gate on my driveway. When I built it, I installed a mouse-hole in the corner, It allows chippy, squirrels, and small creatures to bypass the gate easily, saving them energy, and saving me scratched paint on the gate when clawed animals climb it. It isn’t big enough for racoons, however, and they leave incredibly messy paw prints on the gate. We saw two on Thursday night, big enough to be totally intimidating, with huge asses and relatively tiny heads. They looked like large exercise balls with a shrunken head glued on, but these guys weren’t exercising much.  They are surviving the winter just fine, thank you.

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