It’s raining cats and dogs.
And the boys have been fighting like cats and dogs. At 12, Malcolm provokes his big brothers as if it’s his job. Like wildfire, a bout of light teasing or bickering flares into wresting or shoving, hitting or yelling.
Yesterday afternoon, a truce was declared. The boys forgot their differences and found common cause in the form of a tiny ball of fluff, an abandoned newborn baby bunny.
When Malcolm went out to get his skateboard, he glanced down at the overgrown garden near our shed, and saw something strange. A matted place, red blood, grey fur. Closer inspection revealed four baby rabbits – three “massacred,” one quivering.
Not wanting to leave the spot, Malcolm called Hugh on his cell phone to come outside. The boys put on latex gloves and picked up the bunny, trying to protect it and keep it warm. Chris came home and buried the other three in a granola bar box near the compost heap…a favorite spot for rabbits.
The boys tried nursing the baby with milk from a rinsed-out eyedrop bottle but as Hugh said “It reared its head back and kept its mouth closed.”
In the end, the bunny was replaced in the nest in the faint hope its mother would return from hiding. But there’s been a hawk hunting around our house for months. He is the prime suspect. Most likely, the final baby will meet the same end as the others.
In his short life, however, he managed to unite three warring teenage boys. And that is quite an accomplishment.
