When the good people at the wildlife department of the Peninsula Humane Society gave me a baby jackrabbit to foster, they told me how and when to feed her (twice a day, dawnish and duskish) and how much (based on her weight, which I would hopefully be able to determine with the scale they loaned me).
They told me in this rare case, I was to go ahead and “tame” her by using a warm, damp tissue to simulate a mother’s licks before I fed her in an attempt to develop a bond that would make her likelihood of survival more promising. And they warned me that even if I did everything perfectly, even if everything seemed hunky-dory, I might open her cage one day to find her dead, because wild baby rabbits don’t do well without their mothers. Something I know a bit about.
But they forgot to mention that as I held her impossibly light, tiny body gently in the cup of my hand, stunned at the bones I could feel just under her explosion of beautiful baby bunny fur, and as I used a warm, damp tissue to simulate her mother’s licks — they did not warn me that she might lick me back.
But there I was, a giant wanna-be bunny-momma, having my hand licked by a sweet orphan baby jackrabbit. And I was not just getting randomly licked, but licked with determination. Her tiny, soft, warm damp tongue lick, lick, licked the heart of my hand as she tried to remove some offending scent or groom some imaginary fur.
Whatever she thought she was doing, she did it fearlessly. And in that moment, I was tamed.
(Disclaimer: No flash was used for fear of freaking out the bunny. She remained unfazed by the clicks of the camera.)
Oh dear Lord, I am in love. There are dozens of desert cottontails at my parents’ place in Arizona, and the babies are just so sweet as they nibble on the grass. You’ve been blessed, Loretta, by God through a bunny. xo.