About a month ago I stumbled over a nest of bunnies in my front lawn. Cute little baby bunnies. When I moved aside some of the grass and twigs they looked up inquisitively at me and after a few seconds burrowed back down into the hole. From the expression on the first one’s face he was probably thinking, “You’re not my mommy!”. So I covered them up and left them alone.
Cottontail rabbits are absentee parents. The mom stops by twice a day, dusk and dawn, to nurse the babies in the nest for about 2½ to 3 weeks. The babies spend another week in the vicinity of the nest gathering there at dusk for the mother to come back and feed them. Within a few days they are weaned and are on their own. I watched the mom return most evenings from my front window (and with my binoculars; hope the neighbors weren’t concerned!). The father rabbit doesn’t do anything to help raise the young.
2 Week Old Cottontail
2 Week Old Cottontail
If you see a tiny bunny about the size of a softball it is not lost or abandoned, it is probably independent and will be just fine. If the babies are not yet weaned, the mother is still watching over them. Often you won’t even see the mother. They are sneaky and wait until no one is looking before they go back to the nest area. If the bunnies have fur and are hopping around they don’t need any help from humans.
3 Week Old Cottontail Rabbit
Bunny Nibbled Broccoli
And so the bunnies and I coexisted for about a week. Saturday they found my broccoli plants and my flowers and my illusions about living happily ever after with five baby bunnies came to an end. Yesterday the fencing went up around my gardens.
