be bewee bewee quiet...i'm huntin wabits!

Harland came in the house a little upset on Saturday that he had found a nest of bunnies while mowing the lawn.  One little guy ran out of the nest, but I'll spare you the details of that.  I will tell you that Harland humanely took care of that little guy and buried him.  (The girls don't know about that part, so please don't say anything if you see them!)  When I got outside I found Harland chasing these itty bitty bunnies across the lawn and putting them in a barrel so he could finish mowing without any more casualties.

They were really tiny so it was a wee bit amusing to watch the couple that made Harland actually chase them.  (The bunny is in the red circle):

Gotcha little guy.  Now where are your brothers and sisters?  Harland thinks there were five:

I found one trying to camouflage itself in our neighbor's grass.  The other two came straight out of the nest and let Harland pick them up without any trouble.  We moved them into a smaller bucket...

...they all quickly huddled together and laid on top of the littlest one who could barely hop and trying to flatten itself into the bottom of the bucket.  We couldn't find the fifth bunny and Harland was really worried about starting up the mower again in case it ran under there to hide.  Thankfully it wasn't! I pulled back the towel to get this picture, but they were all huddled under there.

The girls named them Sally and Addy (Grace's choices), Rebeca and RJ (Abby's choices):

After the lawn was finished, Harland let the girls help put the bunnies back in their nest.  We found the fifth one, which we named Houdini huddled in the nesting material, but out of the nest.  They all settled right back in there and we covered them up again...

We made the girls solemnly pinky swear that they would not touch the nest.  Grace thought she was getting five baby bunny pets out of this and she was more than a little devastated over that, let alone not being able to touch the nest...

Abby had made a sign to put on the bucket earlier, to help the mama find her babies (the nest is right next to her feet)...

It says, "Lost bunnies found", and above it, "In this bucket right here."  It managed to stay on the tree for three days...

Harland saw a rabbit near the nest right before dark.  On Monday night he came in and told us the bunnies weren't in the nest anymore, so we were hopeful that the mama moved them.  Yesterday Abby saw one of the babies next to the house, so we think we know where the new nest is now.  I'm just happy that mother came back because I was starting to research how to care for them!