Love in the Afternoon

When I first moved into my house a year ago, a pair of jackrabbits used to hang out in the back yard.  They were obviously a couple; they would play games or snuggle side by side.

Then one of them disappeared, and the other rabbit appeared very depressed, drooping around and hiding under bushes.  At first I thought that perhaps they had had little rabbits and the mama bunny was staying home with them, but as the months went on I knew that some horrible fate had befallen the missing one.

Today I looked out the back door and saw TWO jackrabbits again.  Hares are quite territorial, so I doubt that these are trespassers.  It looks as if my Big Bun has found a new Honey Bun.  (Sorry for the fuzziness, I had to shoot through the sliding glass door and the porch screen to avoid alarming them.)  Ah, love...

 

"Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen."  ~John Steinbeck

Death in the Desert

Earlier this week I glanced out the kitchen door and was startled to see this right outside my screened-in porch:

In case you can't tell, that's a cottontail disappearing pretty much whole down the gullet of one of the local coyotes.  I hadn't realized they ate their prey fur, toenails, and everything, but this particular coyote certainly wolfed it all down and left nothing behind.

I felt a little sorry for the bunny, but when the coyote turned and walked away I realized that she was a nursing female and painfully thin.  I didn't exactly start humming "The Circle of Life," but I did feel that at least the rabbit hadn't died in vain.

“Coyotes, by nature, typically avoid human contact.” ~Warner Johnston  [I doubt Warner ever lived in Arizona, where they don't seem particularly bothered by it.]