Painful Blessings

For the past three years I've been building a lush woodland garden around my home. I live directly next to a greenbelt and a creek runs alongside my house from some rooms I can hear the creek as it rushes by in the rainy months, and in spring and summer months the sounds of nickel-sized frogs lull me to sleep. In these months when the weather is warm enough to leave the windows open, I hear the coyotes' nighttime choruses of yips even more distinctly, though their calls to each other echo along the creek even in the cooler months, and I hear them even when all the windows in my home shut out the storms and the cold.

In these spring months, my daughter and I delight not only in all the budding, bursting, blooming plant growth in our garden, but in the frequent presence of gorgeous little animals. We love to watch the birds, an occasional vole or chipmunk, many entertaining squirrels, and, when we're very lucky, rabbits.

Others in our neighborhood complain about the rabbit population and how rabbits devour tender garden shoots. They resent the rabbits and even laugh when their dogs chase bunnies through the streets. Now, I've planted many times more plants in my garden than anyone else in my neighborhood has, even those who have larger lots, and I've lost several hundred dollars worth of shrubs, perennials, ground covers and many bulbs to rabbits in the past three years. So what? Yes, I'd like to see more of those bulbs, and I wish they hadn't done such damage to several of my favorite new flowering shrubs. But they're rabbits. That's their job. And they're gorgeous. The shapes of their bodies, their limbs, their delightful white tails that bob along and disappear when they're surprised between a fuchsia and some hostas, the exquisite texture and shading of their fur, their long and tender ears, their perfect faces: to us, they're some of the most beautiful creatures on the planet. When they come to feast on our clover or hide in our perennials, we feel honored by their presence. If we drive up and see them on our little lawn out front when we get home, we quietly go out to watch them and talk to them in soothing tones. If we see one out back while we're eating breakfast, we feel we've started the day with a blessing. For us, they're not only symbols of spring but of nature in general; of regeneration, yes, but also of vulnerability and of fleeting beauty, and since they rarely stay long, we treasure each visit and call up or down the stairs to each other to remind ourselves that we're witnessing something special, and how lucky we are to share in it.

A couple of weeks ago I decided I really had to do something about the groundcover that was overtaking the berm under my cherry tree near the front porch. The sweet woodruff that I'd planted there so nonchalantly last year had taken over rapidly and hidden all the other tender little things I wanted to focus on, so, reluctantly, I admitted that I needed to pull it up in great bunches. I pulled back a big armful and set it down behind me, and as I turned back to the berm I noticed a hole about two inches across. I moved closer and peeked inside, and I could see movement and three small heads. There was a trio of some sort of animal with heads perhaps one by two inches in size, and as I looked carefully I saw that they were newborns and their eyes were still closed. As they sniffed around after I'd disturbed their quiet I realized that I had found a little nest of tiny bunnies. We'd seen a pair of rabbits on that very berm a day before, and now we realized why. In my determination to try to push nature around, I'd unearthed a little treasure hole. I felt awful; I took my clusters of freshly-pulled sweet woodruff and piled them before the hole again to keep it from being too open and obvious a target for neighborhood cats, dogs, coyotes or other predators. I was glad I'd been wearing rubber gloves so that I hadn't spread too much of my human scent around their home. I ran to get my daughter so that she could peek at them, too, and we cooed and sighed and made happy girly noises in our delight at finding a whole small furry family living in our garden right outside our front door.

Since then we've noticed adult rabbits in our garden every few days, mostly the rabbit we believe is the bunnies' mom, filling up on good green things so she can offer warm milk to her babies. We've tried not to disturb the little family, but we've been excited and pleased at the prospect of meeting the little ones when they decided to go abroad into the garden at large.

This afternoon I was working in Seattle on a freelance editing job. I was just finishing up a week's project and the five hours of sleep I had last night had worn off some time before. I was grinding through the last of my work when I got a call from my daughter telling me that one of the babies was sitting on our porch at that moment, and that it had let her get within two feet of it. It was gorgeous and still, and looked at her patiently with big, dark eyes. She was mesmerized, and so was it. She noticed that flies were hovering around it, though, and it wasn't flicking them away or running from her. We thought nothing of that, though; it was a young thing, so perhaps it didn't know enough to fear us yet.

An hour later we were looking gently around the garden to see if we could find the magic bunny. Horribly, we did; it was lying dead on the berm, about five feet from the hole in which it was born. It didn't look like it had been attacked by one of the dogs careless neighbors let run loose around our home. It was a hot day, and we haven't seen any of its family for a few days, and I fear it may have been abandoned when the others left the little hole, and that it might have starved and suffered from dehydration.

Its little body was among the loveliest I've ever seen: dark, lovely eyes still open to the world, the large white tail, perfectly formed little feet, dear long ears, inviting toast-colored fur. I asked Lily whether she wanted to be with me when I buried it, and she said she wanted to stay with me through everything. So we wrapped our bunny in the funnies; we figured it wouldn't have wanted to be in a hard, dark box, and that a little paper shroud would disintegrate faster than fabric and would let it become part of the ferns in the back corner of our garden more quickly. We couldn't bear to lay it alone in the soil, so we buried it with clover and our favorite variegated pineapple mint, and laid it in a quiet corner with rich soil. We laid a perfect purple clematis blossom and a fragrant sprig of dwarf lilac above its little body, and thanked it for spending its last hours in our company.

A couple of years ago an exquisitely colored love bird, clearly formerly someone's pet, flew onto our driveway while I was gardening and looked up into my face. It was tired and didn't want to be held, but it wouldn't go further than one of my rhododendron branches, so I knew it was weak. I took it in and let it rest in a ventilated box and asked around the neighborhood, but nobody knew it. We put up "FOUND BIRD" signs and took it to the vet to make sure it was okay, but within two days it became listless and had trouble eating. We put its cage in a warm spot and placed a heating pad against the corner and a blanket around the base of the cage, since the vet said the bird, who appeared so healthy, actually showed significant liver damage from being fed too many fatty seeds. It was a very sick little thing and needed warmth and love.

That night, it died in the warm little corner we made for it. We mourned the beautiful bird we had known for so little time, but we also felt blessed that it had chosen to live its final days with us. The same was true with the tiny bunny; for whatever reason, it got as close to us as it could. Yes, it may have simply been seeking a shady spot on a hot day, a cool porch to rest on as its body slowly depleted itself of nutrients. But still, we felt that this small rabbit, like the lovebird, had given us a gift by allowing us to get so close to it and to show it kindnesses just before and after death. We felt humbled in the presence of such beauty and such an early end to its life, and grateful to have seen something so ephemeral and precious up close, right in our own garden.

I spent an hour in the garden after I buried the rabbit. I watered and admired all the new growth, and wondered at how much had happened there in just the last five days since I last took a considered look around at it all. And I wondered at how fast that little rabbit had grown, and at how much hidden life there is all around me in my garden, and how many dramas and stories and secrets there are going on in the houses of the neighbors around me. I realized how odd it is that we can feel alone in such a densely populated world with so many animals right below our feet, and so many tender people right on the other sides of those thin walls we walk and drive by every day.

It was painful for my daughter to have the remarkably lovely experience with the perfect bunny less than two hours before she discovered its lifeless body four feet away. There was a cruelty to the situation, to the rough juxtaposition of great fortune and loss. But we were better for having had it, even with the pain. We again felt the blessing and honor of being chosen by a tender creature in its final hours, and were reminded how fragile the trust it put in us was, and how much responsibility we have to honor and appreciate it.