I suppose you might gaze at a wicker laundry basket and ponder all the ways it suggests “family” to you, but my basket says “family” in a way that might not occur to you.
That’s because I keep an old wicker laundry basket on the patio, and I fill it not with laundry but with garden weeds until I figure out what to do with them next — compost, or yard-waste bag for disposal? But before the basket gets full enough for me to make that disposal decision, it gets visited daily by the latest addition to the family.
It started last year when I noticed that my goldenrod plants were being trimmed clean of leaves for the bottom foot or so of the stem. It had to be that little bunny I saw hopping along the pavers between the flowers. The leaves were trimmed about as high as a young rabbit could reach standing on his hind legs.
When the goldenrods grew a bit too invasive, I pulled them up by the roots and threw them into the wicker weed basket. Some were so tall that they drooped over the basket’s edge, almost down to the pavers.
And that’s when I noticed that the little bunny hopped out of the garden to visit the basket early each day. After all, as summer progressed and the garden grew tall, the only way he could enjoy the sweet young leaves of his favorite goldenrod plant was if I yanked them and drooped their tender tips back down to his level.
And so, every day I made a point of pulling a few goldenrods and drooping them over the edge of the basket. And every day the little bunny came to visit his own personal breakfast bar, a cornucopia that never ran empty.
He had a distinctive lightning-shaped mark on his forehead, so we called him “Blaze.” And just like that, he was more than just a visitor, more even than a pet.
He was family.
In the evening after dinner, we liked to sit on the patio, not ten feet from the basket, and each evening Blaze would creep cautiously from the garden to graze on the tender tips I had left him.
We would talk gently to him, so he was certainly aware that we were there. And gradually, over time, he would come more boldly each evening and even sit with his back to us as he ate, unconcerned that we might do him harm.
To test how comfortable he was with the arrangement, we sometimes dropped fresh goldenrod leaves closer to us, until he often came and hunkered on his haunches no more than a foot or two from our toes, munching peacefully away.
I am convinced that he thought of us as family as much as we did, and maybe even more so. After all, to a bunny, a garden in a yard bordered by an oak-covered ridge and a wildflower meadow is full of dangers. Dangers that might want to eat him, especially when he’s eating and his guard is down.
But once Blaze decided that these particular two-legged giants that shared his garden were no threat to him, he probably figured that they might actually provide some kind of protection. Because, after all, we were bigger than hawks. Bigger than foxes. Bigger even than coyotes.
And if the hawks, foxes and coyotes were too wary to approach these giants, so much the better. Nobody knows who first said, “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Who’s to say it wasn’t a bunny?
So Blaze joined us on the patio almost every evening, like clockwork, as we sat enjoying the sunset.
Just like family.
Of course, gradually Blaze grew older and bolder, wandering as far as the back of the yard and even into the oak forest at dinner time. Sometimes two or three days might pass before he would come join us on the patio under September sunsets.
He was, after all, a teenager by now in rabbit years, and you know how teenagers can be.
By November, with the garden cut back to the ground and darkening evenings too cool to sit out, we lost touch with Blaze. He had moved on and we wished him well, as you do with family that has grown up and moved on.
He never returned this spring when the garden bloomed again, but in his place was another young bunny, just about the size Blaze was when we first met him last year.
He was a bit skittish at first, just as Blaze had been, but over time he got used to seeing us come out the back door, and he would hop only to the edge of the patio to gaze at us with suspicion. By late July, he would only amble away.
And then, over time, he stopped moving away from us at all.
Today, the little guy comes every day to the bunny breakfast bar to nibble at the tender goldenrod sprouts I refresh for him every day.
He has no identifying forehead mark, so we have no proof that he’s related to Blaze, but we like to think he is.
That’s why we call him Junior, because we’re convinced that when Blaze moved on to start his own family, he raised his son right, teaching him not to fear those two-legged giants that share the patio with him by the cornucopia of fresh goldenrod.
Because, after all, that’s what family does, right?
TR Kerth is the author of the book “Revenge of the Sardines.” Contact him at trkerth@yahoo.com
