Smarter Than the Average Rabbit

 Our dog was yapping ALL DAY at a little bunny that was brazenly helping himself to our garden. I could not take his barking at it one second longer, so Mom and I simply had to hatch a plan to catch that wrascally wabbit. Mind you, he did not sneak in at the dead of night and nibble a carrot.  No, the beast stomped in bold as brass in the middle of the day and mowed through rows of lettuce, carrots, everything.  He stood up and sampled the corn.  He scorned the peppers and knocked them over, as if a comment on the lack of consideration we had in planting such stuff for him.

Furthermore, our dog was yapping his head off every time he spied him in the garden, and no amount of scolding or threats from me seemed to matter to him.

The rabbit had to go.

Household members of the old-time philosophy suggested rabbit stew, or at least scaring him with a pellet gun. 

But the soft hearted animal lover of more modern philosophies would not hear of it.  Besides, where would I find someone with a pellet gun?  Look in the yellow pages under Rabbit Hunters?  Google Elmer Fudd?

“I’ll get rid of him.  I am smarter than the average rabbit,” Stout declarations were made and plans devised.

I got a trap.  Baited it with the time-honored carrot.  Waited.

Mr. Rabbit was having none of it.  Why go in a cage and eat a limp carrot when there were rows of crispy and crunchy ones ready to be dug up and devoured?  No rabbit in trap.  Grrrr.

But I am smarter than the average rabbit.  The dog was yapping his head off, and I was determined that rabbit was not going to bother us anymore.

“Why don’t you get a net and throw it over him?” Mom suggested.

Ah, ha!  I had just the thing.  Awhile back when we had a cherry tree, we netted it so the crows wouldn’t get the cherries.  Not that it worked.  But we still had the net.

I gathered it up and tiptoed out to the garden. “Here, rabbit, rabbit, rabbit.” 

Surprisingly, our white cat Twinkle saw what I was doing and got it into her head that she needed to help.  As I sneaked up on the rabbit, Twinkle approached from the other side and actually herded  the rabbit toward me.  I am not making this up.  But at the last minute, the rabbit jumped over the green onions and skittered away through the basil. I landed in my knees in compost.  Curses, foiled again!

But I am smarter than the average rabbit.  The dog was driving me CRA-ZEE with this yapping and I was going to catch that rabbit if it was the last thing I did.

Mom suggested it would be easier to capture a fox and set him on the rabbit.  Ha, ha, very funny.  I called Animal Control and they came out.  The rabbit sat in my garden bold as brass, eyeing the woman in her spanking clean uniform.  After a merry chase with what looked like a butterfly net, the panting Animal Control officer had all sorts of suggestions about chicken wire or doing away with the beast, but said if I used peanut butter in the trap, it would work.  Next morning, no rabbit and the dog was still barking.  A week later Animal Control had collected a possum and a raccoon but no rabbit.

But I am smarter than the average rabbit.  The dog was now not only barking but digging with his claws at the window.

I looked online and found some concoctions to put around the plants in the garden.  It said to tie up 2 tablespoons of cayenne pepper and 2 tablespoons garlic in a coffee filter and put a series of them around the plants. 

“Okay, Mom,” I said.  “You watch this.”

“I’m watching,” she said with a yawn.

“Oh ye of little faith,” I said, and went to strew my rabbit bombs in the garden.  Mr. Rabbit watched with interest as I hollered at the dog to be quiet.

In a few days, the coffee filters were kicked away from the plants, which had been eaten and turned into rabbit pellets.

If that dog did not stop barking all day I was going to lose my mind.

But I am smarter than the average rabbit. 

So I gave away the dog.