The Rabbits By the Well

I like the chickens at Aunt Dee's farm. Whenever I stay there, Aunt Dee and I go out first thing in the morning to visit them. Aunt Dee calls, "Good morning, ladies!" and they run out of their house when they hear her voice. I help clean their coop and then we put in fresh straw, food and clean water. Aunt Dee lets me gather the eggs and then I like to sit and watch them for a while. My favourite chicken is Victoria. She is a Carrigana chicken, and she lays blue eggs!

One morning in July, Victoria sneaked through the gate when Aunt Dee was taking out the old straw. Victoria was by the well when I went to get her. I bent over to pick her up, and that's when I noticed a little mound in the grass. I moved the dried grass with my finger and I saw five little pink things!

I took Victoria back to Aunt Dee and I told her what I'd found. She came back with me and peeked under the dried grass. She pulled it back carefully and told me it was a nest of baby bunnies. I asked her how she could tell, because they didn't look like bunnies to me!

Aunt Dee said that the bunnies were Eastern Cottontails, and she'd seen lots of them before. She told me that when they're born, they have no fur and their eyes are closed. I asked where their mom was, and Aunt Dee said that their mom only feeds them late at night and very early in the morning, when we're all asleep. We tiptoed away.

All day long, I kept looking over at the well to see if their mom had come to feed them, but she never did. I was so worried about them, I couldn't think of anything else. Aunt Dee said there was probably nothing to worry about. They were warm and snug in their nest and their mom was probably close by. She said that after supper we'd mark the nest to make sure their mom was feeding them. She explained that if you took four pieces of dental floss and laid them over the nest in a tic-tac-toe, you could tell if their mom had come. The mom would disturb the tic-tac-toe when she came to the nest!'

I helped with the dishes, and then Aunt Dee got the dental floss and broke off four long pieces. We went outside and my cousin Josh asked what we were doing. I told him we were going to floss the cows' teeth, and I think he believed me! Aunt Dee and I laughed all the way to the pump.

The nest looked the same. Aunt Dee laid the dental floss over the nest like this:

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The ends were long and reached past the edges of the nest. When she was done, she said, "There. Now we'll come back in the morning and see if it looks the same!"

When we woke up the next day, I couldn't wait to see if the bunnies were okay. Aunt Dee and I went to check, even before we visited the ladies. I looked at the dental floss, and guess what I saw?

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Their mom had come! I felt really relieved. We removed the little pieces of floss so no one would get tangled in them.

Victoria was mad at us because we hadn't visited her first. Aunt Dee said, "You are the huffiest, most OPINIONATED chicken, Victoria!" but we gave her some extra corn and she forgave us.

In August, Aunt Dee and I saw the little bunnies playing in the grass. They were still tiny, but they had fur and long ears and puffy white cottontails. They were hopping and playing and they stopped to nibble tall grass now and then. I was glad that Aunt Dee had known just what to do because otherwise I might have thought they were in trouble and picked them up. Now I know that it's wrong to do that unless you're sure the mom has disappeared. I would have been a kidnapper! Now, what would Victoria have thought of THAT?

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