While wandering around my yard this weekend, I was fortunate enough to stumble upon several newborn baby rabbits. Through a bit of research I found that they are almost definitely eastern cottontail rabbits, or Sylvilagus floridanus. I have seen many of its adult counterparts in my yard over the years, and my dogs have seen even more! Many of them get away, but if we let our dogs out to run in the yard and the bunnies don't hear them right away, they sometimes have gotten caught. They have such soft fur; my brother used some of it to make the inside of his gloves warmer.
The eastern cottontail lives across a wide berth of the eastern United States, as its name suggests. They prefer to live in forests and fields where they can obtain cover easily, under bushes shrubs and the like. They'll eat just about anything, from grass to leaves to bark to dandelions to fruits. They give birth to litters about three to four times per year, with a maximum of approximately nine baby bunnies per litter. They give birth to so many young because they are very prone to diseases and predators, of which they have many. Like I said before, dogs will eat them, but also will cats birds snakes opossums owls and skunks.
They have it tough out there, so it's a good thing that their bodies are extremely well designed, or selected I should say, to their environment. They have large ears to detect predators easily, strong hind legs that let them leap up to fifteen feet, and a highly acute nose, just to name a few. Their bodies curl up very small so it is easier to keep warm in the winter, for which they also grow a thicker coat of fur. While the babies were only about 5-6 inches long, adults can grow upwards of 19 inches in length.
When I found these little guys they were just sitting in their makeshift den. They were just laying there keeping warm at approximately 2:00 PM 10/06/12. They were in my front yard, which is a really good thing because we let our dogs run in the back yard, but not the front. Nature showed a little bit of kindness to these barely week old babies.
When I began to search around my yard, I began to see more than when I usually did. I saw all different kinds of insects, many different weeds and grasses, and too many different kinds of animal droppings to walk outside barefoot again. But seeing it this way makes me appreciate it that much more, so I'll be more careful the next time I mow the lawn, dig a hole for a plant or just run around with reckless abandon, because who knows what I could run over or bury or stomp when I'm out there, nature has a lot to offer that many of us will never see.
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