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Pets

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AndyA

(16,993 posts)
Sun Jun 30, 2013, 10:49 AM Jun 2013

Not really a pet, but lost a back yard bunny yesterday. [View all]

This spring, a wild bunny showed up in my back yard. He (she?) was very cute and entertained us for many hours. The bunny had a schedule, you could almost always spot it in the same place at the same time of day.

It didn't seem to be terribly afraid of us, as we'd accidentally realize we were standing pretty close to it on occasion. If we got too close, it would hop away, but only ran from us in the beginning. It was like it seemed to know we weren't any danger to it.

I had to adjust the sprinkler settings to avoid watering certain areas when the bunny was there, as once I'd trapped him up against the house with the sprinklers--it didn't know where to go, so it crouched down behind the shrubs with its ears down. I turned off the sprinklers quickly, and waited for him to move to another area before turning them back on.

Yesterday morning, I was on the back patio turning on sprinklers when I heard a disturbance back by the fence that separates our yard from the neighbors. I looked just in time to see a red tail run under the fence. I thought it was the neighbor's orange tabby cat going after a bird, as a bunch of birds flew away from the area at the same time. A couple of seconds later, a fox came back under the fence, and was eating the prey it captured.

At first, I thought he must have caught a bird, but I soon began to worry that he'd caught the bunny. I turned on the sprinklers along the fence to scare the fox off, realizing it was too late to save whatever it caught.

It's been almost 24 hours now, and I haven't seen the bunny, so I'm afraid that's what he caught. I miss the bunny because it was so entertaining to watch. Two other bunnies have been hanging around in the front yard mostly, always together. It was rare to see all three in the same place at the same time.

Last night, we spotted one bunny in the front yard. I had hoped it was the one we normally saw in the back yard, but after taking a close look, it wasn't. I guess the fox may have grabbed two bunnies yesterday since the one in front was always with another bunny.

I live right in the middle of the city, so I'd hoped my back yard would be a safe place for the bunny to live. There's a forested area not far from me, and the city has been installing new water lines, streets, and working on storm water drainage the last year, so I figured their presence was disrupting the fox's natural environment, causing it to wander into areas it normally didn't visit. That work has now moved on to another area, so I hoped the fox would stay away as I'd seen it in the front and back yard a couple of times last fall and winter, but hadn't seen it in months until yesterday.

I realize this is the way things work in nature, but I miss the little bunny that was so much fun to watch. What an awful way to die.

I'm going to call the city tomorrow and see if they can set a trap for the fox and relocate it to a more appropriate area before it grabs a neighbor's cat or dog. We have leash laws, but so many people just let their animals run loose. I would have felt really bad if it had caught the neighbor's orange tabby, as he's very friendly and stops by regularly to visit.

I wish people would take better care of their pets instead of letting them wander around loose, exposing them to danger.

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