Bunny and Toad

Yesterday while Kirk was mowing the lawn, he accidentally flushed out a couple of creatures who jumped out the way to escape certain doom from the blades of the very loud machine. Kirk turned off the mower and took a peek under the cucumber vines.

It wasn’t one, but two little animals getting out of the way. This baby bunny is very young. Last weekend it was still in its nest, which Kirk partially dug by accident while dealing with a weedy portion of the garden. 

We have seen a couple rabbits in the yard all summer, and they’ve nibbled a few items — notably the beet tops. Mostly, though, they have only been interested in the big patch of clover growing on this year's fallow sections of garden. Since we no longer have an outdoor cat to take care of critters, this is a great way to peacefully coexist. We’ll probably plant a decoy clover section on some portion of the garden every year, especially now that we’re content to do slightly less intensive growing.

Anyway, the nest of babies had at least four bunnies in it, and we covered it back up the best we could. We aren’t sure what happened to the rest, but at least this little guy was able to strike out on his own. He’s not much bigger than a baseball, which you can see when t o compare him to the perfectly average-sized cucumber he’s hiding under.

If you’re having trouble seeing the toad (he’s well camouflaged), here’s a another picture I took a little later:

These guys hung out together for hours. The bunny never move, but the toad shifted position quite a bit. He never left his new buddy, though. I assume they went their separate ways as the sun went down, but you never know. Maybe they’ll have little reunions out in the garden over the summer and reminisce about how they met under the cucumber vines.