Monday, August 8, 2011

Deadeye mom gets her rabbit

Rabbits in the field and the woods are common but you don't expect them to visit you.  It must have been a time when we did not have a dog (we always had cats) that a rabbit became a regular visitor, sitting on a woodpile and chattering at us.  The woodpile was only about 15 feet from the path that left our back door, passed the chicken yard and went on into the cow pen. Mama had complained about the rabbit, saying she didn't like it being so bold and "sassy."

One evening Mama was coming back from milking (this is the way I remember it) and the rabbit was sitting on a log.  Mama bent over, picked up a pine knot, and tossed it toward the rabbit.  To mom's consternation and everyone's surprise, the pine knot hit the rabbit on the head, killing it instantly.  Mom said she didn't believe she could have hit the rabbit in a hundred years if she had been really trying to hit it.  She only wanted to scare it away because it was so "sassy sitting on that log and looking at her."

          While I am talking about rabbits

The mama cat we had at this particular time had a litter of kittens.  She also  had a half grown son from a previous litter, and the son got to the new kittens and cut their throats.  The mama cat grieved for days, but relief was coming.  Daddy plowed into a nest of baby rabbits and brought them to the house when the mother rabbit abandoned the nest.  We gave the little rabbits to the cat and she accepted them, nursing them, and bathing them with her tongue.  Everything was great for several days, but her outlaw son got to the baby rabbits when his mama was away, and he killed them all.  Mama cat began crying and grieving all over again.

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