It’s harder to hurt a rabbit than I thought.
Since the biblical devastation of our spring/summer crop I have been talking all kinds of tough about the creatures that share this fifth acre with my wife and I — taking aggressive stands against all manner of animals that are completely hypocritical since I’ve been preaching the merits of permaculture to anyone who would listen (mostly my wife, who’s a good sport about the repetition). But the mammals, birds, and insects ate everything that sprouted, ate it all: the flowers, the leaves, the unripe fruit, which more often than not was tossed aside with just a nibble missing. Juvenile pears and watermelons were left this way, like some kind of warning.
We got less than a soda’s worth of calories from a painstakingly selected and planted crop of all kinds of good stuff. By July I had tried pepper sprays and fencing, among other nonlethal options, and replanted twice. By the end of the month I could be found stomping through the yard cursing and talking traps (not catch and release), poisons, and shooting (I do not own a gun).
Despite all of the hot air, this evening, while taking in the canyon view, I noticed a rabbit on the lawn near the garden, nibbling, and completely oblivious. I toed a rock, picked it up, rolled it around my palm — an easy, certain hit. But what was I going to do to the stunned and injured animal after? Bludgeon the bunny?
Nope. Damn rabbits.
So my father was telling me about his and my mother’s first foray into sustainable living. My parents were living on a ten acre piece of land in Oregon while starting a natural health food store in Eugene. They had a garden that they put a lot of labor into, and when they saw varmints nibbling at their crops my father shot them. Not to dishonor the lives of the little critters, and also they were dirt-poor, they cooked up Varmint du-Jour. The way he saw it, it was either the rabbits or his family. While this may be of little use in a suburban environment, you might consider it next time you come upon an interloper. Remember if you cook up a rabbit you caught, it counts as calories from the garden. Think of it as growing bait.
Yeah — desperate for calories, I’ve considered the rabbits. They’re fattened on my vegetables, anyway, so it would be a way to get some of those lost calories back. Add a little omnivorousness to my herbivorous spread.