A few weeks ago I was out in the garden when I came upon this.
That is a hole in my garlic bed. Someone was in the process of pushing away the mulch and digging a nice den. I didn’t see anyone around so I left it alone.
A few days later I came back to this.
Mysteriously all the mulch put back in its place. It was as if nothing happened. If I hadn’t seen the hole days before I might not have noticed. Please excuse my weeds. They are hard to reach in the back of the bed.
Like a child I have been dying to see what was under that pile of mulch. Yesterday I pulled all the garlic out because we are supposed to have a few days of rain and I was trying to see if I could see anything without disturbing the nest. When I got too close a bit of the mulch moved like whoever is in there was trying to get away from me. I pulled the rest as quickly and quietly as I could.
Back in the spring of 2011 we started to clear the grass along the side of the house to make our raised beds. There was always this tall grass that grew along the house and always looked weird. As we were untangling the leaves and grass we came upon a bunny nest. Luckily TB’s rake just caught the hair from the nest and not the bunnies, although there was a moment of panic. We left the nest alone but a little while later out popped 4 or 5 tiny bunnies. Luckily they were old enough to be on their own so I wasn’t worried when they hopped away. That was right before we got Opie so our backyard was safe.
Here is one doing the patented “You don’t see me” defense technique.
This morning I went out to check on the nest and I am guessing we have bunnies once again. There is a tuft of fur right in front of the garlic row marker right outside the nest.
So now I will spend the next weeks trying to watch for creatures that are made to blend in with their surroundings so I can protect them from Opie. He’s a very good dog but dogs are made to catch fuzzy things that run, especially in their yard. Hopefully we will all escape unscathed.
