Clever Girl
My house backs up to a small canyon erupting with cuddly, doe-eyed wildlife- raccoons, possums, skunks, rattlers, bobcats, mice, a fucking mountain lion and the two primary warring camps: coyotes and rabbits. And by "warring," I mean the coyotes eat the rabbits. For an old school vegetarian like me, this is a particularly unpleasant aspect of Darwinism and the whole cycle-of-life deal, for that matter. I mean, which one's cuddlier- coyotes or rabbits? I'd snuggle the fuck out of all of them if they'd let me, but for our respective survival, we all keep a safe distance from each other. For the most part.I wish I were more of a fruit and vegetable guy and to be fair, I'm working on it. I frequently pick up carrots, broccoli, apples and all sorts of other tasty treats in my weekly shopping excursion, but the cold reality is that I throw a lot of shit away, often because it either goes bad or I'm not sure whether it's spoiled. Raised as an old school New England Yankee though, I'm genetically predisposed against throwing stuff away. So there's some conflict there.This is where I tie everything together - in the bushes behind my house, I often see rabbits loitering around a small opening. When I walk out back, they dart into the little hole, leading me to believe this is the egress to their teeny little rabbit home. For the past couple of years, I'd leave old fruits and vegetables in the dirt in front of this hole and I'd see the rabbits feasting away on the goodies at dawn and dusk. They're slow eaters, rabbits. It might take them a good week to put away a couple carrots of an apple.
Now, I've also seen a fuck ton of coyotes around my house lately, which has caused me to reconsider my approach. If I put the fruit out there in the open, the rabbits will be sitting ducks, so I started dropping my fruits and veggies inside the bushes, so the bunnies can enjoy the food in peace. Last week I dumped a few halved apples into the little opening and they next day they were all gone. Again, rabbits are slow-ass eaters, which led me to wonder if the raccoons had maybe inserted themselves into the process or whether the rabbits were just starving.On Sunday afternoon, as I cooked dinner, I halved three more apples and dumped them into the little opening. Yesterday morning - Monday - they were all gone. Weird.Before getting ready for work, I let the dogs out in the back to do their thing, and then took them back into the house. Getting ready for work fifteen minutes later, I looked out my bedroom window and watched as "The Mystery of the Disappearing Apples" was solved. See for yourselves:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVyX4ZgOALw Let me walk you through it- this is actually the third video of the whole deal. She showed up and scoped out the area behind my house, sniffed around the opening where I put the food for the rabbits, then disappeared. Five minutes later, she came back. Watch as she shifts her gaze back and forth, eventually coming up to my patio. She looks behind her, towards my back door, and then skips over to the wood chips in my patio, paws at a specific spot in the dirt and retrieves a big red chunk of apple. You can see it better on a larger screen. Apple in mouth, she happily skips away from whence she came.Mystery solved: the coyote is a vegan! Ok, there's no way that's true, but it's clear that she found the apples and what she couldn't eat, she stole and hid from the rabbits.
