For the last few days, I haven’t been able to lose this image: a tiny baby bunny – looking smaller than my fist in length – was running along the curving curb (in the road!) as we drove down an entrance to Rt. 295. Clearly, this baby had either fallen off the curb or been curious enough to jump down. Then, s/he probably couldn’t get back up onto the curb, then the grass and then (I hope) mama bunny somewhere nearby in the underbrush.
We quickly drove to the nearest exit, took it up to Rt. 206 again, then back down that curve to 295. All the while, I was planning how to stop the car, put the blinkers on and grab the baby (ha! as if s/he would have allowed me near), walk a few feet with her to safety and put her down.
Well, it never happened. As we drove down the ramp the second time, there was no bunny of any size, alive or dead, in sight. We decided to be glad, and probably should have been, because a potentially hazardous driving situation had been avoided. We could only hope the bunny had somehow leaped up onto the curb again and been seized by mom.
Earlier today we rode our bicycles out of Village Park on the Lawrence-Hopewell trail and turned right in our great circle route. Suddenly, a baby bunny sped out of the roadside undergrowth, jumping deeper into taller bushes farther in. Safe – for sure!
Though this second bunny was a trace bigger than the first, I’d like to think its successful evasion of our bikes was a symbol of the first bunny’s safe escape from the roadway. I’ll never know, but I’m hoping.
The joke about multiplying like rabbits (life is cheap?) and the idea of survival of the fittest come to nothing when a baby bunny’s life is threatened.
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