This is one of those memories that so marked one week of our existence here in our apartment village, that I couldn't let it be lost. I actually came across some journal musings from the same month (September 2013) and so I will share them here with the preface that I journal in a more stream-of-consciousness way...so don't mind the lack of punctuation, if you please:
Yesterday we discovered three newborn bunnies in the field in front of our apartment and their exceeding, tiny, perfect cuteness touched the tender souls of my girls. And mine as well. I, most likely, would have reacted/entered in a bit differently on first discovery had there not been the unfortunate constant-joking set of 11-13 year olds surrounding the little burrow in the grass. Oh they were beautiful. Their closed eyes tight and velvety brown. Perfectly formed. Perfectly unaware of their own precarious state. I could have fit the three of them in my cupped palms. I thought about how bizarre it is that in this suburban life we have so little contact with wild creatures and yet how something deeply implanted in the child's soul (in every soul?) longs for a connect there.
These cherished friends survived a whole week on the side of the soccer field. They endured much "love" and I, by default of having a front row view of their lives, became the bunny police. There were actually some really wrenching moments of kids in the neighborhood trying to "save" them and I had to explain a number of times that no, the mother hadn't abandoned them. We would see her, hidden within an evening shadow, come to check in and feed them. But thoughts about these little lives and their safety took up a fair bit of cognitive and emotional space and so it was actually a great relief when me and the girls witnessed their gentle exit from public life...hopping away with their mummy one dusky twilight. And we never saw them again.
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