Sometimes A Bunny Is Just A Bunny

     It began, quite innocently, on Facebook:

I am so glad that we finally got the front bed weeded, cleared and mulched, so that  Mama Bunny could dig a nice little hole and have her kits there-- three, born today, I think.

We put out some carrots and grapes for Mama-- looks like she tried a carrot.

         Pictures??? We saw baby bunnies at the fair yesterday. SO cute!

        

When the mama saw us she ran away, and babies disappeared into a deeper part of the nest. So, no pics yet. When we came back the nest was beautifully covered up and one of the baby carrots was in small pieces.

         Awwwwww. Flopsy, Mopsy, and Cottontail.

         Maybe Peter will be more daring...

Blackberries! That's what I need!

So it's raining out. Just positioned an open umbrella over nest site. Sheesh! Could the babies drown in there? #bunnymom

             Does the name "Darwin" come to mind?

 For a baby bunny? Are you saying it's the survival of the fittest? Am I interfering with The Prime Directive?

                 I'm just saying, the mommy bunny who builds her nest where the rain can fill the nest might not become a grandma bunny.

                                                                            *****

Then I began to wonder.  Am I looking at a collision of world views here?  Is my impulse, to help the mama and baby bunnies living in my front flower bed, a typical "liberal" intervention?  Does my friend's reference to Darwin show a Libertarian or Conservative frame of reference?  At this point I was mentally flapping my arms in panic trying to figure out if the desire to help the helpless meant a long term destruction of what I hoped to support, or whether the opposing point of view was...

                                                                           *****  

   

                I once put a beach umbrella over a bunny nest that was out in the open sun - their little lives are already so precarious!

                                                                          ******

Another friend had chimed in. Her response broke my overactive mental machinations, and I smiled. Sometimes a bunny in your front flower bed is just a bunny.It doesn't require you to be perfect, or solve the problems of the world.

I've done a lot of reading on rabbits since then. I've learned quite a bit about how mothers care for their newborns.  But I haven't seen the babies again.  We've seen the mother, (at least I think so) nibbling on grass as darkness falls.  So she may be nursing them when we're asleep. She may have moved them once we discovered the nest. Or they may not have survived.

As the campaign season heats up the news and social media this Fall, I am going to try to remember that not everything you see and hear is a springboard to politics.

In other words, sometimes a bunny is just a bunny.

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