Opossums and Bunnies

At first, I thought, “Bunnies can climb trees?"

Then Carl commented that a couple of days ago there was a foot of snow on the ground—as opposed to now, when there are few hints of snow, though still ice in the pool and the swales.

The proof that it was a bunny is all the bunny pellets. Everywhere. Thus, that bunny (bunnies?) who all winter long ran back and forth, back and forth along the western porch—whoosh out of the blue as we ate our breakfast/lunch—was/were unbeknownst to us stripping our trellised apple tree. Each branch is a different variety of apple, grafted onto the rootstock. We bought it back in 2014 or thereabouts. It was one of the first trees to be planted after Tier 2 was finished.

The tree is now girdled, which doesn’t mean it's ready to go out and party in a false figure-8 way. No, girdling means the bark has been removed all the way around (about a freaking foot of it), and so nutrients cannot get to those top branches. Thus, the tree and all those varieties of apples are doomed and, possibly, already dead.

Although. Sap is only just now starting to run, and we are considering doing the bridge graft that was successful on one of our apple trees out in the field. That would be cool. Cut the tree off at the girdle and graft all those branches onto the much shortened tree. 

Trellised Apple Tree in 2015

I hold out hope. Carl and Doug will figure it out.

But back to those culprits, the bunnies, because they are inside the main vegetable garden. We will have to figure out how to stop their population boom and damage. And it won’t be with guns. Nor poison. Just a chat with the local bobcats and raptors. I am sad for the bunnies, but I know I will get less sad as the spring and summer proceed.

The other problem being—was—the opossum. Did I not mention that event yet? Maybe because it is along the lines of Nova, a scar at one’s complicity in this wild life. 

Now then. The nursery coop has had, yes, bunnies living under it all winter. Because around January, we saw a large bunny hanging out on the hay bales surrounding that coop. So we ASS U ME’ed it was bunnies. But, for the record, these are not bunny prints.

A few days ago, Carl came up to my office still in his clearing-the-chicken-poop-board clothes. “There’s an opossum in the chicken coop.”

We had this issue once before. The good/bad news is that we don’t have a chicken eating eggs, as we had feared. Chickens do that sometimes when they are bored or discover, peck, peck, that eggs taste good.

We have an opossum. One who is quite cozy in the coop, curled up behind the dusting box, napping. Occasionally rising up to grab an egg or some chicken pellets. So far, no chickens because the chickens are still bigger than that little tyke. Who had to be a baby.

It was so cute and small. Until we created a hallway from the nesting box to the door with old plywood and proceeded to poke it—hearts pounding—to encourage it to leave. It was smarter than us to know it wasn’t going to leave Eden that easily. 

We finally got the baby to waddle out, hissing and baring her teeth and, somehow, miraculously ending up in the have-a-heart trap that we had set up. Into the back of the truck we put the contained opossum. And proceeded to drive around, trying to figure out where to leave it. A place where the heaps of snow wouldn’t deter it from finding a cozy, safe cave. With food. Maybe a friend to keep it company and become best buds, like Pooh and Roo. 

Never mind the fact that we didn’t know if it was legal to move a wild animal. Some states have laws against it because you are basically putting it someplace where it has no means of survival because it is a strange place. Where is food? Where is water? Usually, I guess, people call and have the animal removed to be euthanized. (Which brings to mind a long-ago experience at Angell Street in Providence when exactly that happened.)

We finally found a parking lot to a State park. I can still see the young opossum waddling off into the woods. On its own. And looking at the photos I took prior to pestering the BABY out of its cozy spot? So wee and little. And terrifying when disturbed and told to remove itself.

I try not to dwell there. So much pain in the world. And there is revenge/justice, right? Last night I saw a gigantic, white, long-tailed opossum crossing the driveway to behind the solar panels. Was she looking for her baby? How had that baby gotten into the coop? There’s no way that big Mama could get in…is there? Because, like bunnies in winter, opossums definitely climb.