Rabbits Two, Leah One

Is there anything cuter than a baby bunny?  Day-old chicks might be close, but soft baby bunnies are truly delightful.  They lose their attraction quickly, however, as they get older and hungrier.

It has been a full-on rabbit war in my neighborhood for a couple of years now.  We have a strong population of owls, and until recently my house on the corner was the crossroads for all of the neighborhood cats, which together kept the rabbit population in check.  But in the last three years the neighborhood has turned over and everyone took their cats with them, and we have been in low owl years in the predator-prey population cycle. Avian flu didn’t help the owls out last year, either.  As a result I am now overrun with rabbits and have lost all positive feelings towards them.

Do not be fooled by its cuteness.

Protecting lavender from winter wind

Last spring my lavender test planting had just come through its first winter.  I eagerly removed the canvas tent I had constructed to protect them from the wind, only to find my precious plants razed to the ground and surrounded by rabbit droppings.  I could see that the rabbits had been deeply appreciative of the cozy shelter and all-you-can-eat buffet that I had provided them, and feeling like a fool, I decided I would double my efforts in rabbit defense.  I designed rabbit defense cages out of hardware cloth and cheap pine furring strips for all of my raised vegetable beds, which worked wonders and kept rabbits and everything else out, though they also prevented me from weeding as often as I ought. 

So I went into last winter feeling strong, because as far as I was concerned the score was even between us, rabbits one, Leah one. I covered my lavender plants with ventilated buckets and the same canvas tent, and slept through the storms of winter feeling like no rabbit on earth could break into the lavender fortress.  But, alas, this spring I find they have had their way again, though this time not with the lavender. 

A rabbit defense cage

Rabbit damage on trunk

This time it was the apple tree.  My Honeycrisp tree had just hit its stride in its sixth year, and gave me a crop of perfect apples last fall. But as I drove by the other day I noticed what looked like sawdust in the snow around the trunk.  On closer inspection it was clear that the bark had been gnawed off the tree trunk all the way around the circumference, and about a foot up and down at rabbit height.  Disaster!  All of the water vesicles that bring juices up and down between the roots and leaves of a tree are right under the coarse outer bark in the juicy inner bark.  If you remove the inner layer around the whole trunk you cut off all nutrient flow, and the tree dies. Rabbits like that juicy inner layer, at least when food is scarce at the end of February.   I usually wrap the tree trunks with paper to prevent the winter sun from thawing out the dark bark during the day and putting it through the damaging freeze-thaw cycle in the winter nights.  Wrapping the trunk also prevents hungry rodents from eating the tender bark when they become desperate. But I let that chore get away from me last fall, and now it has been the rabbit buffet of the year. I’m quite devastated that my honeycrisp tree is now dead. I will miss it. It will be three years before another tree is established.  

Chef Adam had the brilliant idea of cutting the branches and bringing them in to see if they would bloom inside.  It was a lovely thought for a nice little tree who is doomed to die when spring thaw breaks dormancy and the sap starts flowing to a dead end.  So today I pruned the branches off and brought them inside, and now have an entire tree in water buckets around the house. I’m hoping very much that in a couple weeks I will be able to enjoy the last hurrah of spring bloom from that little tree. And next year, no tree trunks will be left bare for the rabbits!