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Just wanted to share a feel-good story with everyone today. Moved here 7 years ago onto 8.5 acres of dry sagebrush hills sloping down to the Snake River. LOTS of wildlife but particularly liked the two little cottontails who obviously held the deed to the place long before we did!

Well, with all of the many predators, we have usually only seen the two of them BUT this year it's been different! We have Grandpa, Mom and Dad, a "teenager, four toddlers and an infant" - all showed up tonight at once! What fun and such a joy to watch...

Ears and whiskers flickering, nose wiggling and big round eyes looking every which where. They have began coming up on the front lawn and the back patio every night around 7 PM. MTV for the cats - National Geographic for us!

Thanks Idaho,for sharing, that it was a charming way to get this day going for me. I sure needed that today....As for me I was just about to post my eye opening but painful new knowledge that my beloved cats has taught to me. In memory of my Beautiful sweet Mia I will post it under," I've learned another important lesson from my loves ".

Allison, I'm glad that my post about all of "cottontails" brought a smile to your face - so sad that it sounds like today was a day you needed one. I'll look for your thread in the future when you are ready to post it....

Until then, know that many feel with and for you - our pets really do teach us unconditional love.

A few years back we had a stray rabbit in the neighborhood. It was obviously someone's pet, but we couldn't get close enough to catch it. It was a great pleasure to watch it stretch out under the evergreen bush across the street. Turned out that the owner needed to repair the latch on its cage. Once that was done, we didn't see it anymore. Even longer ago, one of my cousins had a huge rabbit as a pet. It was hilarious to see her walk him on a leash.

sms, Loved your stories - both of them - thanks for sharing! Reminded me of something that happened probably 15 years ago when we lived at the old farmhouse. Came home from work and did a double-take when I saw a LARGE white rabbit under the lilac bush. Ran into the house to get DH to show him - nothing there by the time we got back outside.

A few days later, feeding the horses, saw the same white rabbit sitting on some hay bales - went to get DH and, yep, you guessed it - no rabbit in sight by the time we got back (plus, by this time time, DH has decided I had gone "around the bend") but I gave it one more try the next time I saw him. He was headed to our barn - of course, the white rabbit was gone before anyone else could see it!

This went on for some two weeks or so and DH suggested that I should just call him "Harvey" after the Jimmy Stewart movie (where the rabbit is imaginary) and THEN DH saw it himself! Comfortably situated in our barn on some old quilts...

So I had to ask DH, who is crazy now? He shook his head and said "guess both of us."

A couple of days later, doorbell rang and the neighbors' daughter was there to tell us that she had retrieved her white domesticated rabbit from the back-side of our barn and hoped it hadn't caused any problems. DH just said, "tell Harvey, no problems."

She was obviously very puzzled and asked "who? I don't think I know anyone named Harvey - is that another neighbor?" - it's been over 15 years and we still laugh about it to this day.

I always thought my cousin's rabbit should be named Harvey. Alas, she did not agree.

We've had a huge increase in the rabbit/hare population. When we moved here there were no rabbits but lots of fox and coyote. Then mange struck them. Without hair they could not survive the winter.

The next year we had a couple of rabbits and snowshoe hare. Now how did they know it was safe to come to this area? And where did they come from?

Seems like the more you watch nature the more you don't know.

metwo. I've wondered the same thing about bird sanctuaries...

I've read that predator and prey population booms follow a pattern. First the number of prey increases. That make the living easy for predators, so their population increases. Then they eat too many of the prey and the prey populaton drops. Then the predators can't catch enough to feed their young and the predator population drops. Fewer predators lets the prey population increase and the cycle repeats.


I got a pair of young adult cats from the Humane Society a few weeks ago, companions to my senior citizen cat. They have been sitting in my bay window, watching all the baby bunnies. There's a lot of clover in my yard and the rabbits are loving it.