Colby is almost 18 months old and can make a dozen or more animal sounds, one of which is sniffing his nose repetatively for a bunny rabbit. What he didn't know was that the bunny rabbit from all of his books was hopping around in our flower bed in the front yard.
We noticed him maybe a couple of weeks ago, and thought, "oh, how sweet!" A few days later I realized that sweet little bunny was eating my marigolds. And my verbena. And my lantana. Oh no, not my lantana, that I planted in October of last year and only just now, in the summer, almost 9 months later, has finally started to flourish! So I told Robert he needed to get rid of the bunny rabbit.
Neither of us wanted to kill the bunny rabbit. We wanted to catch it, alive, and drive it to a safe place and let it free. Somewhere far, far away from my lantanas. So Robert bought a small game trap, and put it in our flower bed with some celery and carrots. For about five days, he tried placing it in different places in the flower bed, corralling the bunny towards the entrance to the trap and night after night, replacing the celery and carrots. We realized that either the birds were stealing the food, or the bunny rabbit was too small to set the trap, or he was simply hopping over the pressure trigger. So different measures were needed.
Robert took out his bebe gun that he hadn't shot in ages. He explained that the bebe gun should only stun the rabbit and allow him to capture it, and then we could take it to the nice lantana-free place and set it free, so ultimately same end result as the trap. The first night he tried to get him with the bebe gun, a neighbor scared the rabbit right as Robert was getting ready to shoot. But the second night, Robert came back inside after his "hunt" with a triumphant look on his face...and a bloodied ax. Wait, what?
Apparently, Robert was able to hit the bunny with the bebe gun. The bebe gun, however, did not just stun the rabbit. It broke the skin, and sent the rabbit reeling, all over the yard - jumping and flipping and flailing. Robert apparently then grabbed an ax to put it out of its misery and chopped the bunny's head clean off. In our front yard. In front of who knows how many neighbors. Oops.
I wasn't too thrilled to hear this gory story, but I really didn't mourn the bunny more than a few seconds before thanking God that my flower beds were safe! :)
So let that be a lesson to all the bunnies out there - before you step in my flower beds, consider I have an Alaskan man with an ax in the house, ready and willing to chop your head off!
