Yes, I know they're cute.....

We have a family of rabbits in my back yard. I've seen at least one parent, maybe two that look pretty much identical, and three or four little ones. They are incredibly cute, and they are eating my flowers. I now truly know the meaning of the word ambivalent.

If I see the little babies out there, I stop everything and watch them. They are eating the dandelion leaves, plantain leaves and clover in the grass, with a little creeping charlie weed thrown in for dessert, so they can stay as long as they want. At the rate they reproduce, I figure they can beat out your average herd of goats in lawn care activities.

Then we get to the parents. I saw one of them heading for the flowers the other day, so I walked out on my back deck and decided to see how close I could get before he (or she) ran off. I slowly and quietly walked to within six feet of the animal, while it carefully watched my approach. Evidently I didn't seem very threatening, as it looked me right in the eye and turned and ate a petunia blossom, one of my favorite purple ones!

At that point I yelled something intelligent like, "Hey, you ate my flower!" and it did run off, but I am certain it was still chewing on its way across the yard. And smiling!

I should have known from experience that rabbits are masters at winning your heart, then eating everything they can get close to in the greenery department. There was a time when our family had rabbits as pets. Yes, we willingly let them into our lives!

We got two rabbits (our first mistake) from the local nature center, which assured me they were both female. One was a beautiful jet black with a white blaze on its ruff, and the other a salt-and-pepper brown with a black head. They were really beautiful animals, and I eagerly built them a nice, big outdoor hutch and put them both in.

What I didn't know, and what the nature center couldn't tell either, was that rabbits figure out what their genders are long before people can accurately discern them. We found this out a few weeks after they arrived when my daughter went out to feed them and discovered eight babies in the hutch. They were absolutely adorable with little pink ears no more than an inch long. Six were coal black like their mom (yes, she was really a girl), and the other two were silver and blonde. We kept those two, and I built two more hutches.

I also at this point built a plywood and chicken wire barrier across the middle of the original hutch, a non-verbal "no touching" order for the mom and dad. Dad ate his way through it, chicken wire and all, and they produced two more babies: one black and one brown. Those two we gave away, and I built hutch number four. Now the rule was "You can look at each other in your various hutches, but nobody is touching anybody!"

We really did have a wonderful time with them, and they lived for a good, long time. I would put up a circle of chicken wire in the yard, and plunk in a kid and a rabbit and let them play for an hour or so. Both kids and all four rabbits seemed happy with this arrangement.

I also discovered that the best garden fertilizer in the world is fresh hay riddled with rabbit poop. I piled in the hay under and in each hutch to keep them warm during the winter, and raked it into the vegetable gardens each spring. My vegetables were huge and very tasty.

The mom lived the longest, and finally went to sleep and didn't awaken at the ripe old bunny-age of eleven years. The moral is I still have a soft spot for rabbits.

So, when the wild ones enter my yard and make at bee-line for the petunias, I head outdoors and put out some carrot-tops or fresh lettuce for them, hoping to stave off the decimation of plants in the garden. I also let my weeds grow without concern, as I know that my friends in the bunny kingdom will not let them get too large. We have reached a gentleman's agreement. They will be fed, and I will keep most of my flowers.

I believe I get the best of this arrangement, as I get to watch the fun.