Yesterday morning I watched a cottontail hop around the perimeter of the new donkey paddock. I wondered if she might be the mother of the nest of babies we found the night before. I don’t see rabbits often anymore, not since we’ve had Leonard… and the six outside cats. Rabbits with much sense steer clear of our place.

Early this morning, I woke up to check on the bunny we’ve tried to bottle feed for the past two days. She was starting to take the milk better last night and even though I know these wild babies rarely make it, I was beginning to let myself hope she might. I found her sprawled awkwardly and already growing cold. I held my breath, squinting to see if she was still breathing, and I saw her tiny diaphragm move once.

Maybe it wasn’t a last breath, maybe she was already gone and the organs were still shifting away inside. I don’t know what’s scientifically possible or probable - I’ve always preferred to keep a veil over those things. When I was pregnant, I couldn’t bring myself to read about the physiological changes that were taking place inside me - I didn’t want to know precisely how the “miracle” was happening. The workings of the womb and reproductive systems were one of the last medical mysteries, and it was only through the trafficking of corpses in the 18th and 19th century that scientists and physicians began to have a true picture of how things worked. I have a book of poetry about it called “The Resurrection Trade,” by Leslie Adrienne Miller, and even ten years after reading it, lines and passages come back to me.

The poem I’m thinking of today is called “Mirabilia, 1726.” It’s a bizarre account of a woman who fooled a male midwife and much of her community into believing she was giving birth to litters of rabbits.

“Even after churching, more rabbits fell

from her marvelous loins in Guilford,

so the English Court brought her into town

to have a look, and though they caught

the serving boy with pockets full of blind

and slippery bunnies and trundled Mary Tofts

off to jail after her confession, the fact

remained that she had fooled at least

a half a dozen educated men by simply

being what she was, mammal, mystery,

cave and warren, unmapped womb,

a woman.”

We can only guess what Mary’s intentions might have been. Maybe she’d lost her mind, maybe she was grieving, maybe she was bored or desperate or thought there was some degree of power that could be gained by it. The rabbit babies are not even secondary characters in the story - they are merely collateral, disposable lives that are only mentioned because they happened to be found in a place they shouldn’t have been. Just like mother cottontail and her ill-fated babies. Just like Mary Tofts. Sometimes our best intentions don’t matter for much.

We buried little baby “Berry” beside Rory and Lilly at the edge of the prairie grass and I cried for her in a way I know I shouldn’t have, only knowing her for two days. Maybe I was crying for all the little bunnies and rabbits and animals whose lives are taken by something bigger or stronger or more “important.” It’s nature, I know, but some days I feel weary of the cruelty.

Some of you old friends might notice that my “Rabbit Trail” has disappeared, at least from this website’s name. I followed it along and it turns out that little trail led me to Sweet Haven. So that’s where you can find me now.