Our dog, Mya, has been geriatric for the majority of her generous lifespan. Fourteen in human years, her hips started going about five years ago, and it’s been a heartbreaking decline. But, while she’s all of 1,879 years old in dog years, somehow, the ole girl miraculously soldiers on with several of her favorite hobbies … namely audible farts, burying uneaten pancakes tossed out for the birds and hunting small prey.
The latter was how we discovered a burrow of four tiny bunny babies in our backyard. I was sitting at my desk working one afternoon when I heard commotion and “No! No! No! Drop it! No!” Mya had one of the newborns in her mouth. At Spike’s urging, she opened her jaw and deposited the baby onto the ground. JoJo carefully moved it back to the nest using a washcloth. Thus, days of standing guard by the burrow began.
For more than a week, every time we let Mya out to go potty, someone stayed with her, herding her away from the unsuspecting rabbit toddlers. The girls spent hours cowering next to the bunnies, tracking when they opened their eyes, reporting the day their ears popped up, the moment they tried to hop out. The girls were attached, or, as our summer sitter put it, “invested.”
We lost one fairly early on, the runt of the litter. But for the most part, the babies were thriving, and inching closer to leaving the vulnerable hole in the ground and hopping off beyond the safety of our watch and our fence line and into a bright bunny future.
Then, a few days ago, Hank and I were putting laundry away when we heard a terrible scream. The back door slid open and a hysterical Spike flew up the stairs. She was shaking, violently. Punching. Angry.
The girls had lost themselves in joy for just a moment. Gotten distracted.
They’d been jumping on the trampoline when Spike looked over and saw the tragedy they’d so vigilantly been trying to prevent. Mya had gotten one of the baby bunnies. The others had hopped away and escaped.
As I held her against me – sweaty and hysterical – I felt her convulsing in the frigid, sobering shock of devastation. Of loss. Of heartbreak.
They were just wild bunnies; a dime a dozen. But my girls, Spike in particular, saw them as their babies to protect. “They had their whole lives ahead of them,” she wailed. “They were so happy! Why would Mya eat them? Why?”
I could tell her it was just nature’s way. That animals have instincts and those instincts are powerful and not malicious. I could rattle on and rationalize, but her pain was so raw and immense. She was lost in it. I just let her shake in my arms, instead.
The truth is that I understood her unhinged, involuntary response.
Spike is me, and most moms, really.
The bunnies are my babies.
And Mya is all that’s scary in the world.
Growing up, in my parents’ house, we always watched the news during dinner. I hated it. It fed a seed of fear inside me that my overactive mind was already watering. Planes crashed; kids went missing; people hated people; weapons were in every pocket. It was a mealtime ritual I was eager to abandon when I left their nest. The few times Hank has flipped on the PBS NewsHour in our home and on the Friday nights we have dinner at Mom and Dad’s, those feelings are reaffirmed, only now I understand the magnitude. The ramifications. Planes crash; buildings fall; kids go missing for unspeakable reasons; people hate people; weapons are in every pocket; the planet’s on fire and there’s an abundance of moral bankruptcy at “the top.” I still hate it. The news, that is.
The moment JoJo entered the world and made me a mom, that tiny seed of fear planted somewhere inside me, became a tulip bulb. With every bunny I added to my burrow, that anxiety and need to protect my babies split open and grew bigger. I don’t think that ever goes away. It’s nature. Instinct.
Every time I say yes to a playdate or they go for a long bike ride or swimming in dark water or jump from a high fill-in-the-blank or the school bus is a five minutes late, a few drops of worry water fall upon my fear, and it swells.
Motherhood is about finding your footing on the slippery ground of how much you should hover over the burrow, keeping all the dogs away, while still fostering their desire and muscle to hop past the fence when the time comes. The thought of getting the timing wrong or mistaking a wolf for a well-wisher makes me feel claustrophobic.
JoJo is nearly a teenager. Spike already acts like one. I can feel their urgency to start hopping further and further from the yard, without me shepherding over their shoulders. It means Hank and I are doing our job. It’s also terrifying.
Hold your bunnies close, dear friends. They grow up so, so fast.