Because I Need More Drama...

Perhaps you will recall an off-hand mention of bunnies in our backyard. The backyard in which our dog roams free. The dog who is a beagle, a breed that is bred to hunt rabbits.

I'm happy to say that we believe our baby bunnies all made it out of the nest in our backyard. However, I'm unhappy to report that we--who am I kidding--Londo has discovered a few dead bunnies and one dead bird in our backyard. We had been keeping our dog on a leash in the backyard to prevent her killing of bunnies, but somehow dead bunnies (and the dead bird) ended up in our yard anyway. Who knows what killed those unfortunate animals (if Londo suspects anything specific, he does not tell me, and I'm glad).

Our neighborhood is literally infested with bunnies. They. Are. Everywhere. Lots of people in our pretty, suburb neighborhood have lovely flower or vegetable gardens in their front and backyards. In fact, the house to our left has had a vegetable garden in their yard since before we moved in and the house to our right just planted one this spring. Which puts us and our beagle in the yard between to very delicious gardens.

Did you know that bunnies love gardens? If you don't believe me, just ask Mr. McGregor. Did you know that the best way between two gardens is through our yard? We suspect we will have bunnies coming and going for the rest of the summer at the least.

But we can't live our lives in constant fear of the dumb bunnies. A huge reason we bought this house was to have a yard for the dog and us. We don't want to have to walk the dog anymore, especially with a toddler and a new baby. We want to sit in the backyard and enjoy ourselves, as we have before.

This past weekend, Londo spent a good amount of time cleaning up our yard, mowing, trimming and making sure there were no defenseless animals in the yard. There was a bunny, but that one was very capable of hopping through the fence to the neighbor's yard. We decided to let our dog back out in the yard without us again. We knew that she would sniff around like crazy (scent hound, you know) and probably get some good chasing in. But even when she had a baby bunny cornered a week or so ago, she just kind of nosed at it and kept it cornered until Londo could get her back from it. After all, she wasn't bred to kill the animals, just find them and corner them and alert the owners that she found them. Which she did.

Yesterday, I had a very emotionally draining day, which followed a very emotionally and physically draining weekend. As Londo was putting the Pumpkin to bed, I fed the dog and cat and let the dog out. She was taking a while, and I figured she was sniffing around the whole yard, maybe eating bunny poop (a favorite of hers). I was tired and just wanted to go to bed.

WARNING: This next paragraph is not for the squimish.

I opened the door to call her in, and she was at the bottom of the steps. As the light shined full on her, I saw a bunny hanging from her mouth. The legs were definitely bunny legs. It was not moving. And as I shrieked, my dog started to wolf the bunny down.

I will not go into more graphic details, because I can't even think about it! Ugh, I want to throw up just writing what I did!

I slammed the door because I couldn't watch or deal with it. I knew exactly what the dog was doing, because I watched her do the same thing to a dead bird I was trying to get from her once many years ago. That's the kind of image that sticks with you.

I screamed for Londo, and he came scrambling out of the Pumpkin's room and hurried out to take care of the situation. By the time he got out there, there was no situation to take care of. In fact, he wasn't sure I'd even seen a bunny. Dude, trust me. She was not across the yard in dim light. She was within a few feet of me in full light. I unfortunately know exactly what I saw. I know she left no evidence of what happened, because the same thing happened with the dead bird years ago--which I watched in horror as it happened.

So this was a long, gross post that I'm sure everyone is glad I shared. But I need to exorcise this story, and I do so by writing about it. I also wanted to point out that a woman who is 37.5 weeks pregnant is only emotionally and hormonally capable of handling so much. I think I'm at my breaking point. Let me please suggest to everyone who knows me to please just tell me good news, be supportive of me even if you don't agree and encourage me to put my feet up and rest a spell. And for goodness sake, don't let my dog loose in the backyard. I'd also love any volunteers take the dog out on a leash even in the backyard, or even just check the freaking yard for me before the dog goes out.