An Unwelcome Discovery

So I'm outside doing yard work inbetween bouts of resting with my feet up, drinking wine, looking at stuff on the laptop rigged up outside on the deck in the cool, shady part of a perfect weather day.  I have the loppers out and I've been slowly tackling one area after another to clean out unwelcome volunteers and saplings.  I finished the area around the big double tree, which now looks bare compared to what it was before I cleaned out a small pile of burdock and saplings!  You wouldn't know it by looking at it, though.  Anyway, after resting up a bit I aimed for the area around the "arbor" and wandered down in that direction, loppers in hand.  As I bent over to cut down a volunteer sapling I see - a dead bunny.  Oh my.  It's a young one as far as I can tell and I think it may have been a victim of Lady Hawk who visited earlier this morning, but I scared her away when the bird were putting up such a ruckus!  Well, I didn't save poor bunny, who looks like he or she died of puncture wounds from Lady Hawk's claws. 

Now, unfortunately, I have the task of burying the bunny.  I can't leave it just laying out there in my garden and I refuse to put it in the garbage, besides which I don't have "garbage cans" like in the old days; these days nearly everyone in the area puts out large black plastic garbage bags and I'm not going to do that.  So, it's to the mini-cemetery I keep for animals who die in my backyard.  But I have to gird my loins to pull out the shovel and do it.

I would not have made a good pioneer woman, that's for sure.  I would never be able to kill a chicken to save my life, or kill and skin an animal, let alone butcher one!  I lost a favored boy friend in my mid-20's when he discovered one portage/hiking/fishing/camping-out weekend that I did not have the stomach to gut a fish, let alone bait a hook!  Nevermind I caught more fish than he did.  What a schmuck!  I hiked, I camped, I portaged our canoe with him through hill and dale and enjoyed it all.  Built a camp fire, ate beans, fried the fish, made flat bread from scratch and I made some'mores and banana boats for dessert.  Didn't make any difference, I lacked the necessary skills :)  Now I'm so glad I flunked that test!  That happened before I fell in love with chess.  He would never have "tolerated" chess. 

To make myself feel a little better, I took some photos of the squirrels who have been venturing by in the meantime.  The blue jays, cardinals and chipmunks are too fast for me to catch on the camera, even when I try to "set up" the shot by tossing out peanuts, whistling and then waiting, camera in hand! 

Happy squirrel, caught a nut I threw out for her.

This squirrel I managed to get a photo facing toward me.  They are very camera shy.  You can see how shady the
yard gets in the afteroon.  She (or he) was coming toward me for a tempting nut  I was holding up!  Oh my, the grass looks
so green, it's because of all the fertilizer I put down and all the rain we received over the last seven days!

Can you see the bunny?  He (or she) is just to the northwest of the small pile of stuff I cleaned out of another part of yard
with the loppers.  The body of the dead bunny is hidden behind the dwarf hydrangea bush left of center, next to the "horns of the Goddess" (the "Y" forked tree branch.  It was that area I was going to clean out when I found the bunny's body.  Although you can't tell from this photo, there are several "volunteers" growing in this bed that don't belong there.  I don't think I'll
be cleaning them out for a few days yet - but first, I've got to bury the dead bunny.  Sigh. 

Another squirrel, headed toward the other side of the retaining wall by the big double tree.  Yes, I have been working,
you can see the pile of cut discards there.  The grass sure looks tall though, even though I cut it yesterday!

Okay, it's now 5:32 p.m. Enough stalling, I've got to bury the dead bunny.  Here I go - girding my loins all the way...