Bunny in the Garden!
How one man dealt with an unwanted guest in his lettuce.
In my college days one of the houses I lived in was in town and it had a large back yard. Being an avid gardener, I couldn’t help but turn some of the soil making a large rectangular section that I composted in preparation for planting. Garden pests were not much of a concern to me at planting time. Underneath our house there lived about seven or eight stray alley cats that had taken up residence before we moved in. I figured just leave them there and mice, moles, gophers and birds would be scared away from my garden or eaten and thus would pose no problem. I would only have to deal with the insects whose numbers could be easily knocked down periodically with a little dish soap and water in a sprayer. Life is wonderful!
My daily routine was to wet down the soil so the seeds would sprout, go to school, come home and water again before going to work. On the first day of this routine, I noticed a large black bunny in a cage next to the fence. This did not bother me as the bunny was caged and behind a wire fence. One morning I went out to water and saw that there were radishes beginning to sprout. I rejoiced loudly. A few days later the lettuce and beans began coming up. Again I rejoiced. Unfortunately, when I returned from school that day, the entire garden had been mowed down! I looked suspiciously at the bunny cage next door where the black bunny was busy chewing on his pellets and drinking water, a perfectly innocent scene.
I replanted the things that had been eaten. My corn began to sprout. I cheered it on. Meanwhile I kept a sharp lookout for signs of thievery. The corn was up two inches when the problems started again. Plants were disappearing daily, faster than they could come up! Then I found the rabbit tracks in the soft dirt next to one of the missing plants. I scoured the fence line for an entry hole large enough to allow the bunny to get into the yard and found an opening where the gate was supposed to close tightly. I suspiciously spied on the bunny resting in its cage. I looked closely and saw the cage door was UN-latched.
My next step was to go next door to speak with the neighbors. “We can’t keep our rabbit from escaping no matter what we do,” they said. “I will not guarantee the safety of your bunny should I find it on my property again!” I exclaimed. What a waste of time that was!
I closed up the hole at my gate and hoped for the best.
The best never came, but the bunny did. The black beast had chewed the board I put up to block the hole, ran down what was becoming a pathway to a bunny refrigerator full of bunny food and ate more of my struggling plants.
It was time to get tough. I remembered a devious trick learned from my Boy Scout manual. I set a snare trap at the bunny doorway to my garden using 50-LB test monofillament fishing line. When I checked the trap the next morning, I found that the trap had worked well, but the cursed rabbit had somehow broken the line. I looked up at a sound near the back of the house wondering where all the hungry alley cats were keeping themselves while that wretched rabbit ruined my garden. My question was soon answered.
Right before my eyes was a standoff that I have trouble believing to this day. There was the big black bunny chewing unconcernedly on some plants near the back porch. Sneaking up on him was one of the alley cats. “My problems are about to end!” I thought excitedly.
I could see the rabbit watching the cat with one eye. The cat moved forward. The bunny decided it was time to stop eating and check the situation out. The cat stared at the rabbit from about ten feet away. The rabbit stared back. Suddenly the cat took off on a dead run toward the rabbit. The rabbit charged the cat. “Get him!” I shouted, clearly in favor of the cat winning this one. The cat suddenly jumped up and the rabbit jumped to meet it in mid air. As the bunny jumped, it brought its rear legs around and landed them right under the cat’s chin sending the feline cart-wheeling backwards. The cat ran under the house with the rabbit in hot pursuit. Every cat that was currently under that house ran out like the devil himself was after them. They nearly fell over each other trying to climb the fence before the demon rabbit got them, too. It was at this moment that I decided that either I would have to leave offerings to the black demon from next door or give up gardening all together.
I made peace with the rabbit by raiding the back of a nearby grocery store every day. In the trash I would find discards of vegetables that were not fit to sell. I purloined the best of these to leave at a small altar I placed next to the hole in my back fence. If I happened to forget my trip to the market, I always paid the devil his dues whether I wanted to or not.