The Day We "Saved" A Wild Bunny

I've been babysitting a couple of kids just for the summer. I'm pretty much the Best. Babysitter. Ever...Really. I try and keep the kids busy. Busy kids are happy kids :) We've been to the zoo, museum, a splash park, and other cool places. Some places more than once. Every week we go to at least one special place. One of our favorite places to go is to different parks around town.

Last week we went to a park here in the city. It's not the best park but it's less than a mile away. The chance of us finding a discarded beer bottle or other "adult items" are pretty high. During our trip last week though we found something we didn't expect.

A little bunny was sitting in the grass right next to the playground. He caught our attention because he was alive but not moving. Even as kids were running right by him and sitting next to him he was still. I thought the thing must be injured and told my kids to just leave him alone. But then other kids started talking about how they wanted to step on him or stab him (creepy kids!) and it suddenly became our job to protect the poor thing.

Ethan making sure the other kids didn't hurt him.

I asked for advice on FB and my brother in law said to just leave it to mother nature. I should have listened. But it wasn't mother nature I was worried about. It was the little serial killers in the making hanging out at the park!

So after watching it for about an hour, Ethan took off his shirt and used it to pick up the bunny. I was worried that when we got a good look at it, it would have some sort of injury but it looked perfectly fine. But even during the drive home he still didn't move. When we got it home we put him and a big bucket and gave him food but I was worried that he would jump out when we weren't paying attention. No. If we were going to "save" this bunny, we were going to make him as comfortable as we could. Soooo I went out and spent a bunch of money on a cage, food, and everything a little bunny could ever need.

How could we not love this cutie?

I had every intention of keeping him. He started eating and moving around and would even let us pet him! He was doing so much better. We had really saved this little guys life! 

A few days later...

After the kids went to bed one night I decided to open the cage and pet him for a little while. The thing flipped out! He jumped so high that he almost got out of the cage. So, I decided to do a little more research. Apparently it's almost impossible to domesticate a wild bunny :( Not only that but when young bunnies are really scared they stay perfectly still. Some people may even mistake them for being injured. 

We hadn't saved this poor bunny. We may have kidnapped him from his family!! We had to let him go. So we took him to an empty field and said goodbye :(

He seemed so happy to be free! As soon as we lifted the cage he hopped right out.

The kids were OK with it. I told them that now that we had a cage and all the supplies that maybe we would buy a pet bunny. One that we could save from like a Petco. or something :/