Rabbit rescue aka "Bunny Cam"

I was noticing a low spot off the deck this past week.  I knew it was there from mowing but what caught my eye was the way the grass seemed smoothed or washed back.  Thought maybe it had something to do the with rain and I didn't investigate further.

Well Rusty put his nose in the hole on Tuesday and kept pressing deeper and I knew we had a situation.  I took him inside and came back out with some to poke around a little.  I pulled back the grass clippings and got to rabbit hair.  I didn't know if it was a ball of hair or the back end of a rabbit. I pulled that back and saw an opening and some movement.  Saw a naked bunny and quickly closed it back up.  I knew I had to cover it but wasn't quite sure how.  I called Steve for some ideas and he thought maybe a bucket with a hole and a brick on the top.  My main concern was keeping Russ out of it.

I didn't really have a bucket to cut and thought of crates that Gene and Ruth would bring to me from Pella. They were used for tulips/bulbs.  So I cut a door in one of those crates and used some of the many bricks still on my deck and here we have a shelter...

Here is the hole

 



 

Closer look

 

You can see how close this is to the desk

 

Crate over the hole

 

Showing you relative to deck

 

Nice cut doorway (used a file)

 

With the bricks

 

Closer

 

Another view

 

Looking from the deck

 

This is why I covered the hole...

 



I put out the trail camera to see of mama would come around

 



Rabbits are notorious for leaving nests.  Part of it is to not draw attention to the location and I've read a mother really only spends about five minutes a day feeding milk to the little ones.  That is enough for them. So the questions were "would mom come back" and "would she go inside"?  Here are just two images but you can see she is very careful to look out before going inside.  Last night she went in it three different times.  So I don't know if that is normal or due to the change in what I put over the hole.

 

Making sure the coast is clear

 



 

You can see her inside

I feel I have them covered (literally) for now.  The concern is when they come hopping out and keeping Russ away until they are old enough to be on their own.  Then they will need to dodge the fox, coyotes, hawks and owls in the area.  Welcome to being a rabbit!

As you can imagine, I will be following their progress and hopefully be able to capture images of bunnies tumbling out.