on rabbits and bulls and a loving set of eyes
the kind that really see
A few months ago we had a couple of our rabbits escape. Truth be told, we had one escape and, subsequently, I felt bad for the lone escapee and decided to let her sister free to accompany her on their wild gal adventures. We weren’t sure what would happen. We’ve had the odd rabbit escape in the past and all seemed well until the coyotes discovered there were easy pickings down the Slowdown farm road. This time, the sisters seemed to have better navigated the challenges of their freedom. Yes, better indeed. There are two litters of rabbit kits in two different pockets of our farm. And, clearly, some wild rabbit buck out there quite satisfied with his discovery of two exotic lasses to add to his harem.
I wonder how evolved, or devolved, a domesticated rabbit really is. There’s a reliance that transmutes into responsibility between the farmer and the domesticated animals of their farm. We all tsk and shake our heads when we hear tales of people dropping their house cats off in a forest or their unwanted dogs off in a field. We know they don’t have what it takes to feed, water, and shelter themselves. It’s not much different with farm animals. Even these two does, clearly happy and well fed by their own means, know enough to stay near the farm. Both have, clearly, had some lusty rendezvous with that wild buck, but they didn’t follow him into the wild places he roams.
One doe had her kits in the chicken house and the other dug a tunnel under the wood shed. We didn’t even know there were babies around until, one day, the babies grew too big to fit into their burrows, covered all up by their mothers, and they started springing up like popcorn. When my husband went to get eggs out of the chicken nesting boxes, he noticed a mound below his feet coming to life. One perfectly round baby rabbit after another popped their heads up and high-tailed it to the wall of the house, quickly running underneath it (another tunnel dug by mama) and disappearing into an adjoining part of the barn that is presently housing our bull. It’s been such a joy to see those sweet little fluff balls cavorting around the bull while he lazily munches his hay under the clear, bright winter sun. He doesn’t seem to mind them one bit and they have no concern for his bulk and power. They’re too busy nibbling the hay that falls from his greedy mouthfuls and taking naps in the shared sunbeams. I have been taking great delight in just watching these seemingly unlikely animals sharing space and time with each other.
My husband and I were eating breakfast the other day. Breakfasts are our biggest meal of the day and we take care with them. We’re setting the pace of our day with the pace of our meal and the pace seems a sticky thing to us. We’ll get up earlier if we have to just to keep things as slow as we can. Breakfast that morning was a fermented oatmeal topped with summer’s dried cherries, raw butter, maple syrup, and raw milk. With it we had some homemade herbed moose sausages with a plum chutney I made just as