Roadkill Made Me Cry Today

When we started renovating this house, we kept noticing a rabbit out and about.  A brave brown little thing that we'd spot in the mornings and evenings, scampering anywhere from the very back of the property to the hedge we share with the neighbor in the front yard. 

Surprisingly, he stuck around through the chaos of the renovation, and after we moved in with Bowden (who has access to the back yard but not the front) he seemed mostly settled under the front porch and the front hedge.  The kids and I would see him almost every day when we played outside and we started calling him Andy (after our street) and we talked a lot about why we don't touch him and play with him, we just watch him, so he doesn't get scared.

Andy the rabbit

Well a few weeks after we moved in, we figured out why he had been so persistent in sticking around a dangerous construction zone -- a mate and baby!  We saw a smaller grayer rabbit (I assume that's the female?) and a wee little one scampering around the hedge and eating grass several evenings during playtime.

Aw.  :)

baby rabbit

Something that had been on my list to blog about -- the sweet rabbit family who lives here at our new house.  (And how we like them better than the kinky frogs.  Just sayin'.)

Which brings us to today.  When I was pulling into our driveway and had to swerve to avoid what I assumed was a dead squirrel in the street, swarm of flies still overhead.

You know where this is going, right?

It was Andy. 

When I looked twice, it was clearly a rabbit, which made my stomach drop in the fear that it was one of our rabbits.  And then when I got up into the driveway and parked, I saw the grayer rabbit and the baby running around the yard.  Around lunchtime -- the middle of the heat and sun of the day.  We never see them then.

And I knew, I just knew, they were looking for him.  So I did what any rational pregnant woman would do.  I sat in  my car and cried.  And cried and cried.

I cried for mommies and I cried for babies and I cried for Simon and I cried for my pastor's recently deceased pet rabbit Fred.  And then I cried because I think our family, including Bowden, might have forced the rabbits to live closer to the street than they were really comfortable doing.  And then I cried for the deer I see running around the interstates at night, and for deforestation due to the development of urban societies in general.

Yeah.  I'm that pregnant lady.  It was a lot of crying.

Until my sweet little Nathan offered up so many words of reassurance that I thought I might do him permanent damage if I didn't get it together.  (He can't stand it when people cry, especially me; it troubles him immensely.) 

So I unloaded the kids and put them down for naps and went upstairs to work on Sprout's nursery and I cheered myself up a bit. 

But I can't stop thinking about Andy and his rabbit family.  :(