Bobby

Bobby the Bunny died today. We've been keeping the cats IN, IN, IN because of their midnight marauding scarily near the cardinals' nest on the back porch; but last night Hugh took them for a supervised romp down the hill. I came home, H came to greet me, and Hamilton and Fritz were left to their own devices for a moment. Seeing as they were out front (away from the nest), H was unconcerned, but I was nervous. Fritz came running at first call, but not Ham. I wandered in the near-dark, calling and calling, and finally spied him a few yards down the hill, but he would not come to me as usual. Slowly I realized that he had something. I ran down the hill in my sandals (missing a new giant ant bed on the way, happily). There at Hamilton's feet, now discarded by him, was a bunny, the tiniest, sweetest bunny you've ever seen. It was so still that I had to lean in before I could make out that it was a bunny and not a rock. I grabbed Ham, took him inside and shut him in the bedroom, grabbed a towel and a flashlight, and ran back down the hill.
We brought the little bunny inside. He was immobile from shock and who-knows-what other damage, and there was a little blood, but the bites didn't seem too bad. We cleaned him up and decided that we would take him back down the hill and leave him for a time, thinking that he might recover once out of sight of the giant humans, or that his mummy might come for him. But 15 minutes later he was right where we'd left him. We brought him in again and made him a little box. Using an eyedropper, we gave him some water, and Hugh made him some tiny carrot slices, one of which he licked. We named him Bobby.
Bobby didn't look very good in the morning (even though he had eaten one of the carrot bits) so I took in to town to our vet. They kept him there and tended to him but to no avail.

We decided that he ought to be returned to the hill from whence he came so the next morning I picked up his little body from the vet and brought him home, albeit somewhat indirectly. I had a massage scheduled that afternoon, and the vet is north, and massage and home both south, so I had to retrieve my little bunny-filled box from the vet and then take it in with me to the massage, as May in Austin is no time for leaving bunnies, dead or alive, in parked cars. April kindly did not mind the additional company.
When I finally arrived home, Hugh and I walked down the hill, trying to figure out where to put him where he wouldn't be easily dug up by cats or dogs or coyotes or foxes. We finally found a spot under a little oak tree, dug the hole, unwrapped his little body, and laid him to rest. We marked the spot with stones and a "B" fashioned from twigs.