Ravenous Rabbits

[Frederick W. Schueler]

Everyone,

For the past two winters, we've been inflicted by Cottontails, but this
winter they seem more ravenous than in past years. Not only are they
mowing down sprouts from Apple stumps and ruining our attempt to
establish high-producing Red Raspberries, but they're clipping down
Black Locust shoots, destroying all our Rose bushes, ruining our attempt
to expand a high-producing clump of Black Raspberries, nibbling down the
seedy Lambsquarters that project[ed] above the snow, are burrowing into
a brush pile where Aleta put food waste in the fall, and have completely
cleaned up a dump of Cat litter-box waste - both clumped litter and
feces. This is the new-style vegetable-based litter that's supposed to
have some benefits more than the traditional clay litter, and Lagomorphs
do eat the sloppier form of their own feces, but I hadn't anticipated
that they'd be interested in feline productions (going the other way, a
loose Cat had killed a Cottontail earlier, and dragged it into our
woodshed to eat its head, and we helped ourselves to the meat of the
hind legs, before putting the carcass back in the shed, from which the
Cat dragged it away).

Across the street, I've been dumping our "organic waste" in one spot in
the Buckthorn-to-Maple Grove, and the same or another Cottontail has
been processing that: at first the greens and Potatoes and
pressure-cooked Chicken bones, then, with some reluctance, the Butternut
Squash and Onions, so now there's just a residue of Lemon peels, tea
bags, and eggshells.

I wonder if anyone has some Coyotes they could lend us? We've heard very
few of them this winter.

fred.
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---------Frederick W. Schueler & Aleta Karstad ------------
Fragile Inheritance Natural History - https://fragileinheritance.ca/
6 St-Lawrence Street Bishops Mills, RR#2 Oxford Station, Ontario K0G 1T0
on the Smiths Falls Limestone Plain 44.87156° N 75.70095° W
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