The Rabbit Hole

This is about an incident in our back garden, which infused some thrill in our otherwise mundane life.

There is some wildlife around where we live – rabbits, deers, pheasants, etc. Somehow a rabbit ?? got into our back garden. We believe it had dug its way in from under the wooden fence panels. 

It is not as if we have any plants ??- fruits, flowers, or veggies in the back. It is all just grass/lawn - I think it is easier to maintain that way. There is no access to any water source from the garden itself either. So, we thought that the rabbit, without anything to eat or drink, would eventually just go away the same way it had come in.

We were not looking for the rabbit the next day and did not see it, so presumed that it had gone away. But it had stayed hidden. Yesterday, we spotted the rabbit lying still in a corner. Naturally, I was suddenly called ‘the man of the house’, whose duty it was to ‘keep the home and garden safe’ and to ‘get rid of the intruder’. Gender stereotyping anyone?

Anyway, I opened the back gate and went out to the garden armed with one of those colourful cobweb removers, the one with thousands of soft bristles on one end and an extending pole on the other.

This one:

I held the pole so that the soft part was away from me and used it to try and nudge the rabbit towards the open back door. The rabbit was unmoved! It seemed to be quite enjoying the tickle. I pushed a bit harder. Nope, no response. It was pretending to be dead, although I could see it breathing heavily. It was not going to fool me.

Ankhan, who was 8 then, and Ankita were in the room overlooking the garden, shouting directions and instructions to me non-stop, “Poke it in its eyes”, “Get closer”, “Try harder”. They were hysterical, to say the least. Ankhan brought a chair and sat in front of the window egging me on. Ankita suggested that I could try literally dangling a carrot to ‘lure’ the rabbit out of the garden. She even chopped one up for me while I was still out armed with my deadly weapon evaluating how much force was justified. 

She said, “Don’t give too much carrot to the rabbit, or else it could die due to sugar overdose”. 

What? Are you sure that is relevant advice for the current situation? 

I asked Ankita whether she had googled that and got an emphatic “Of course not!” in reply.

Hmmm.

I took my mobile phone out of my pocket and googled “how to get rid of stubborn rabbit from back garden”, while I held the phone in one hand and my weapon in another. All the top results were about how to kill rabbits, with “Sponsored” results made up almost exclusively by rabbit poison sellers. I thought that's a bit extreme, so was obviously not going to help.

At this point, the rabbit quietly moved away from me a bit and found another cosy spot in the garden. 

I turned the pole around, now holding it from the soft part and gave the rabbit a little poke. It appeared to still enjoy it. So, I pushed the side of its face with the pole, trying to turn it so that it was facing the open back gate. It just pushed my pole back with an equal force and continued to enjoy its little lie down. I spooned it up with the pole, but it coolly fell on its feet, briskly walked away, and settled into yet another corner, hiding its face behind one of the gutter downpipes on the side of the garage wall. It was telling me, “If I cannot see you, then you cannot see me.” 

While this was going on, Ankita and Ankhan were continuously giving me instructions through another set of windows now and were freely sharing their disappointment about how I was failing miserably and was not up to the required standard. I have honestly yet to experience such a lot of sledging even while batting. 

Eventually, I used a bit of force with the pole to shove the rabbit’s body towards the gate, one push at a time, fully ensuring that I never hurt it in any way. It would move, but then walk back a little bit. I kept at it, and eventually was able to push it far enough for it to be outside the gate, when I closed it behind me. 

The rabbit was out. Now Ankita and Ankhan were cheering me on. I was their hero. 

Ankita said to me a bit later, “Rabbits must have evolved with a natural defence mechanism of staying still and pretending to play dead”.

Okay.