Bunny Rescue!

I've always been an animal lover. Maybe because of the farm, maybe because, as a child, I spent so much time with my cousin Erica, who would bury road kill in the backyard. She loved her stuffed animals the way I loved my baby dolls. Yesterday afternoon Dirk was in the backyard, tossing a ball to the girls, and when he called me outside, I could tell that something was up. Laying on the patio table was a tiny, wet, animal that Piper had discovered in the backyard. Poor, defenseless, motherless newborn! Ugh! I cleaned it off, identified it as a newborn baby bunny, and wrapped it up in a towel and went to work making phone calls. Our vet directed us to the Oak Mountain Wildlife Rescue, who's hotline directed us to Wild Mammal Care of Alabama. After numerous phone calls, the sweet people at WMCA urged us to try to find the rabbit's nest, as reentry and reuniting the tiny animal with it's mother may be this bitty baby's only hope. We scoured the backyard twice, the second time with flashlights. After more phone calls and emails with photos back and forth, Amy asked if we'd be willing to meet her with Pascal (I know you're not supposed to name them, but I couldn't help it) so she could take him to her rabbit expert volunteer. I tell you what, this organization has got my support 100%. The only state and county certified nonprofit who takes in mammals, they work round the clock to nurture and reenter animals that most people would call the critter catcher to kill. Their whole mission is based on coexistence. I mean, this land was theirs before it was ours, can't we take the necessary steps in order to coexist with these harmless creatures?

Since we've moved to the woods, we have come across snakes (yes, they died), bunny rabbits, turtles, birds, raccoons, opossums, chipmunks, and squirrels. I feel as if, living on an acre which is mostly made up of woods, we have the ability to do our part and offer up our habitat for these sweet animals who need homes. It's the least we can do, right?

Here's sweet little Pascal! He was trying to hop around and everything!
WMCA emailed me this morning with an update on little Pascal. We definitely made the right decision in taking him to Amy last night. The rabbit expert determined that he had been without Mama for at least two days and was severely dehydrated and very thin. I bawled all the way home after dropping him off, thinking about his poor mama looking for him! I kept asking myself if we did the right thing, or if we could have scoured the backyard one more time looking for his nest!(a note on this photo....NEVER try to offer a baby animal cow's milk or water! just one of the many things we learned about sheltering wild mammals last night! BUT, the photo does give a good sense of scale and illustrates how tiny this baby was!)

That was our night, in a nutshell. Look at me. I'm in a nutshell. Help me get out of this nutshell. (that's for Leyna.)