Many people have asked for “less kids and more bunnies!!” in the posts around here. Okay, maybe they haven’t said it quite like that, but it’s been pretty close. At any rate, the following is a fully Yard Bunny Family update.
I sat out in the backyard, being eaten alive by bugs.
I watched the mosquito spraying truck come through on the street below ours – which gave me the awesome benefit of all of them running for safety – and dinner – at my house.
My purpose in providing myself as a insectual feast was to stalk observe Momma Yard Bunny, knowing that it was right about time for her to feed her babies.
Plus, I enjoyed the quiet and solitude of the empty-of-other-humans backyard.
I watched and hoped. She munched on grass, perked her ears up every now and then, and acted nonchalant.
Then I saw something else jump through the grass – something tiny.
Ooooh…Momma was just trying to look uninterested – she was, in reality, very subtly supervising tiny sets of ears, barely visible peeking over the tops of the blades of grass – her baby’s first playtime.
Can you find the baby that she’s guarding below?
Three tiny bunnies, hopping playfully from clump to clump of our natural area, which will remain as natural as possible until they are grown and headed off to college, if I get my say.
One jumped out of that thicket and froze in place when he saw me,
One hiding under a rather impressive weed,
And the third crouching into the grass, hoping I’d soon leave and he could get back to playing chase.
At 12 days old, they’ve grown impressively since my last photographs:
One Day Old
Three Days Old
Twelve Days Old
They’re still nursing – and I must say, three active bunnies wrestling over who gets the best spot on the trough looks quite uncomfortable. I’m pretty sure Momma is weaning them and getting them onto the weeds, though – and I don’t blame her a bit. Their newly added playtime – every day sometime during the hours of 5:30 and 7:00 PM – is awesome. I should totally set up bleachers and charge admission.
(I have a suspicion that they’re also allowed to play at those same times during the AM period, but I’ll never find that out firsthand.)
Momma remains totally cool with me, but the babies are much more skittish (and shockingly quick – no worries about the neighbor’s cat). I’ve taken Noah and Ali out to see them close up, and surprisingly enough, Noah is much more interested in them than Ali.
Momma is also interested in Noah – I think she understands our similar circumstances.
…and may be a bit jealous that I only have one on my trough.
Love the updates on the bunnies! So cute!!!
That is amazing how fast they grow. Yep, I cannot imagine nursing a lot at one time either.
ahhhhh yes, but weaning to weeds at just 12 days old…who’s got it better? the one with one in the trough? or the early weaning?!?! :)
That’s a very valid point, for sure. Time to get Noah on the weeds.
That is so cute!! Let me know if you put in bleachers!
Okay, the bunnies are PRECIOUS! Love them! I wish we had bunnies in our yard.
I think the bunny understands the one at the trough since you have only two stanchions.
Is it shameful that I had to dictionary.com the word stanchion??
no, not shameful at all. I grew up on a farm otherwise I wouldn’t have known the word either (and I had to look up the correct spelling). I hope when you found the definition, my comment made sense.
It made me giggle when I read the definition! Great analogy!
This post made my morning!!
You must be a mind-reader – well partially anyway. Only this morning I was wondering how Yard Bunnies were doing. Now, tsk, tsk, even intimating that we, your loyal readers, would prefer Yard Bunny postings over Ali and Noah postings! Maybe it is just that tiny, peaceful animal creatures seem so terribly vulnerable bring out the best in some of us, and we know, certainly and without question, that Ali and Noah, small and vulnerable as they are, have two loving and capable parents who are not, themselves, quite as vulnerable as Momma Yard Bunny. I confess that I am guilty of not commenting every time I swoon over the precious pictures of Ali and Noah, but that by no means should be taken as disinterest :-). I absolutely melted when you posted the picture of Noah having his last taste of toe before going to sleep – it brought back precious memories of my own three children at that age.
I am fortunate to now be very involved in the daily life of my adult autistic grandson, having the privilege of taking him to his volunteer work four to five days a week, as well as social functions for him and his autistic peers, and as many sporting activities as we can find in our area. I truly am blessed to be so close to my awesome grandson. God has filled him with a loving spirit, and I do thank God everyday for this grandson as well as my eight other grandchildren and 5 +2/9 great-grandchildren.
I, as one of your loyal daily fans, will try to be more sensitive and responsive to the fact that a blogger lives for concrete feedback. So, until we develop our telepathic senses to a greater degree, I will try to become one of your more print-visible readers.
Wow – you sound busy! And a delightful Grandmother and Great-Grandmother!! I had no idea how valuable grandmothers were until I had my own kids. Who, incidentally, are at Gramamma’s right now so that I can have a date with my hubby!
The cute!!!!! My mom has five cats that she lets into her very fenced backyard supervised. Despite the smells the cats must leave behind, a mama bunny has tried twice this spring to dig a nest in the middle of their yard and have babies. The first baby didn’t make it, the second attempt yielded 3 babies who seem to be about the age yours are. It’s so hot my mom went and put a stool over the nest to block the sun and at one point went out to do some other sort of shelter when the babies were just born and it rained. Her cats are just irritated they can’t go outside and Mom just hopes Mama Bunny chooses elsewhere next time.
Adorable pictures, amazing that they let you get that close!
Thanks for the update. The Momma Yard Bunny and her babies are adorable. We have some yard bunnies in our yard, but they don’t let us get nearly as close as Momma Yard Bunny lets you get. I put some rabbit food out on the patio, and they’ll come up and eat it, but I have to stay in the house and watch or they run off. I’ve named them Jack, Peter, Dennis Hopper, and Baby Thumper — since there’s a Baby Thumper, I’m sure that either Jack, Peter, or Dennis needs a feminine name. ;) I love it when they eat some of the long skinny weeds — they slurp them down so fast that it reminds me of someone eating spaghetti.
Are they all the same colors? All of the ones in our neighborhood are, which makes me extra scared when I see a dead one in the road. So far it hasn’t been Yard Bunny – luckily I think she really does stay in our yard almost full time.
Cute bunnies!!!
And you have trucks that spray mozzies? Gosh, we could do with that – we’ve got a stream down the back of our house and it was a very long hot summer last summer… Hasn’t really gotten cool enough yet to totally kill them off.
Yup! They just don’t come on my street :(
So cute! I can’t imagine what life would be like if our kids grew that fast.
I’m very pro-rabbit. I want this family to move to the west side.
But have you named the bunnies? My boys would have named not only Mama Bunny but all wee bunnies.
I can’t believe it hadn’t occurred to me at all to name them!! So I asked Ali at the breakfast table what their names should be, and they are now dubbed Blue, Green, and Pink.
This is so cool!