Baby Bunnies, Times Four

Our "Thumper-Summer"

One summer morning when I was seventeen, my sibs and I were having breakfast when Dad came into the kitchen smiling, cradling something in his hands. 

When he opened them, there were four tiny, furless bunnies, so young their eyes weren’t open yet. Dad had found them in a hole in the backyard.

He thought the brown fluffy lump in the gutter a block away was probably their dead mother. She had obviously been hit by a car, leaving her babies orphaned.

We finished our breakfast and flew into action. My youngest sister had some baby bottles for her dolls -- the good kind with rubber nipples, and she donated them for feeding the bunnies.

When we called our vet, he said to feed them a tiny bit of cream on a four to six hour schedule. He said they may not eat very much. Mother rabbits in the wild visit their babies only twice a day to feed them, typically around dawn and dusk. This is to avoid attracting unwanted attention from any predators in the area.

During the first week, we lost two bunnies.  Muffy and Fluffy died and we buried them in our backyard. After the second week, we had lost another, Brownie, leaving only one, Thumper. He was beginning to look just like a miniature bunny with brown fur and longer ears.

Our whole family adored him.

Dad called the local feed store to ask when Thumper might be ready for real food. The manager said as soon as he had teeth, he could have rabbit pellets, grass, and carrots, but until that time, only the cream.

In those days, our family loved tent camping. We had a huge circus-size tent; huge, because there were so many of us and we slept on cots from the army-navy surplus store downtown.

We usually camped at one of the lakes during a few weekends, and a full week at least once every summer. That year, our week was planned for late July at Lake Hope.

Dad and Mama thought the woods at Lake Hope would be the ideal place to set Thumper free. He would be a grown rabbit by then and he should be on his own. We would hate to see him go, but we loved him and everyone agreed, it was the right thing to do.

The other week of Dad’s vacation in August would find all of us piled into our station wagon and on the road from Ohio to Florida. Our grandparents, (Mama’s parents), retired there and we visited them every year.

Summer passed way too fast. The day finally arrived and all packed, car loaded, we drove to Lake Hope and what would be a sad farewell. We each had jobs to do and once camp was set up, we took a turn holding Thumper and saying good-bye. There were even a few unashamed tears. Then we walked into the woods and watched him scamper off between the trees.

The next morning, Thumper was sleeping in the tent with us. We were all happy to see him. But after a second round of goodbyes and tears, we took him even deeper into the woods and set him free again. That was the last we saw of Thumper.

That was our Thumper-Summer. It’s a very special memory none of us has ever forgotten.

Poet/Writer/Author of 5 books.
Quora Top Writer 2018.
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