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| bouncing bunny |
Our rabbit didn’t do too
well with her first litter back in March. Gabrielle had the very unpleasant experience of
discovering mum in the process of eating, or at least biting into one of her
tiny charges and was forced into rescuing it from maternal fangs and then
putting it swiftly out of its misery.
Horrible. Several died
until one day I found the remains of the litter all cold.
We did some research and it
appears that ironically, considering their immense capacity to procreate,
rabbits can be very poor mothers.
It also seems that a mother rabbit eating her offspring is not fully
understood and isn’t linked to babies being handled (a common claim). The advice seemed to be to forgive her
this once, and maybe even a second litter, to see if she’d come good.
We took her to the buck
again, round neighbour Annick’s house and, three weeks later, she presented us
with a litter of eleven. Over the
next few days, we lost three and I wondered where we were going this time
around but then we started to see signs that the remaining baby bunnies were
putting on weight. Except one.
Once they had fur and were
big enough to scamper round the nest box, we noticed one little scrap was half
the size and had his head held to one side and an eye closed. He didn’t seem at all stable when
moving around. Then, one morning
when I went out to feed mum, I found him outside in the run, soaking wet (it
had rained overnight) cold to the touch and barely breathing.
When keeping animals, one
sometimes has to intervene, as Gabrielle had done above, and perhaps it would
have been kind to put this rabbity runt out of his misery. What I did was pick him up and race
back to the house, where Gabrielle took him into the bathroom and warmed him up
gently with the fan heater but he refused her attempts to feed him. Once he was warm and dry, we tucked him
up with the rest of the litter.
There was little else we could do and I was convinced that I’d find him
dead the following day.
He has remained very much
alive! We treated his eye with
drops and he has grown a lot, almost catching up with the others. Unfortunately for my reportage, in
moments of stress, I tend towards an ambulance man rather than a Don McCullin so I don’t have photos of
the rescue from hypothermia but you can see how well he looks now in the photo above.
Part 2 – The Tree Returns
from the Dead
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| first shoots of recovery |
Back in March, with the tree
layer of our forest garden
finally planned, we had to move a couple of trees
including one sweet chestnut (variety: Marron de Redon). A bit late to be mucking tree roots
about and getting a bit to big to move anyway, we would need to keep its roots
well watered. We had not a drop of
rain in April. After a fortnight
of parsimonious precipitation, we had another thirty days sans une goutte de pluie.
I managed to keep it, the
other newly planted trees and the sixty five hedging plants going with too many
trips carrying heavy watering cans.
When all seemed to be ticking over nicely, I turned my attention to
other things and I found one day that all the leaves had dried up, turned brown
and were just about to fall off. I
told Gabrielle and tried to be philosophical but it was still very
disappointing. I gave it a real
soak and left it, not really thinking that there was any way back.
The tree wasn’t dead but had
gone into self-preservation mode.
Large leaves like those of the sweet chestnut transpire a lot of water
and as the roots weren’t taking any up, the plant shut down. With a big boost of water, it’s woken
up again and is enthusiastically chucking out new, bright green leaves. I won’t let it down again and will keep
a close eye on its progress as I’m not sure I’d get a second chance.
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| a second spring for this chestnut |
