Visitor

We have a little visitor to our garden and it's beginning to look like it might be moving in. The poppies have popped in incandescent colors, the peonies are muscling through the wax that covers the buds, and my wife, Dee, abashed by all the floral effort decided to water the flower beds.

As she did her impression of a rain cloud, apparently she surprised something that made a dash for the tall grass. At first she thought it was a snake but when she looked for it she found it was a small brown rabbit about 6 inches long and, after the dash, with all the animation of a statue.

It stayed stock-still in the long grass as we looked at it and my son, Avi, took some photographs. Dee's first instinct was, of course, to pick it up, cuddle it, find it a nice box and feed it carrots. She was persuaded to let it be overnight in hopes that a parent would retrieve it. This morning it was still there.

When my beloved earth-mother tried to save it, it proved to be less fearful of the rest of the world than of her, and made a dash for the flower bed again, disappearing amidst the poppies.

As for me, I'm torn between my appreciation of the cuteness of our visitor and the realization that now I know what happened to those lettuce plants that went missing. On the other hand, I just found out that chard is problematic for people who have had kidney stones, so maybe I should just let things take their course.