Rabbit factory

I should start by saying we put Janie to sleep just after noon yesterday.  She had gone steadily downhill since Wednesday, had stopped eating & early Saturday morning could no longer drink water. 

Four days beforehand, the two of us, me & Janie, were walking around the front yard at not-quite dusk.  A wild rabbit sat not five feet away from me, clearly aware I was there.  It hopped around I circles but made no move to leave.  Janie was so out of it she didn't even see it.  At first. 

When she did see the rabbit, she began to tremble all over.  Instead of bouncing over to & then after it, she began to slowly follow while the rabbit continued to make lazy circles.  They did this for maybe 20 minutes, maybe more.  The whole time Janie's body was tense & her nose was wrinkled & sniffing.  Eventually, the rabbit lost interest & hopped away home; Janie stood & watched it go & then we went inside. 

There is a particularly fecund rabbit population within our borders.  I mean fecund reproductively, not intellectually; these are quite the laziest most foolish rabbits I have ever even heard of.  I have a few theories & right at the top is that damn donkey.  People keep donkeys for a lot of reasons, but the most common is they will protect what they perceive as theirs.  Other equines range over large area & will probably return to particular places but they don't really care about those places.  Donkeys care. Many years ago there was a very high strung mare here temporarily & two dogs from up the road had a good time chasing her away from the fence, snapping at her nose & hooves.  Until. 

Until one day they crossed under the fence to run that mare around the pasture until she dropped.  It didn't work out that way; what horses run from, donkeys run towards & while I suspect the donkey did not give a shit about the mare, she was in his pasture & fell under his protection. There have been other dogs since then, but none that got so distracted they forgot whose yard they were in.  Donkeys are those mean old men who hold your kickball hostage...& try to kill you when you sneak in to retrieve it. 

As far as our donkey is concerned, those ridiculous rabbits are his & woe betide the fox, coyote, raccoon who thought he might have a quick snack.  As a result we are breeding a particular not-safety conscious leporidae.

Janie did catch a rabbit once, many years ago.  She reached over its back & grabbed it by the scruff of the neck.  Unfortunately (OKay, fortunately) her front legs did not reach the ground so every time the rabbit hopped, it levered her whole front end off the ground & up on her spindly hind legs.  Eventually Janie let go & that rabbit also just hopped away.