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They Must Smell the Vegan on Us

Cause it's starting to feel like we're living in a Snow White house.

Last spring, we discovered robins had made a nest in one of the bushes on our back patio. This didn't bother us so much, but whenever we spent time on our back patio, the adult robins would freak out, sometimes nearly falling out of the nest. They also attempted a complex series of "stealth" approaches to get into the nest with food for their babies. We tried to explain to them it wasn't necessary because we could see them, but they never got the message.

We, ofc, couldn't contain our curiousity, so would periodically peer into the bush to see how the babies were developing. In case you were wondering, they're pretty hideous when they first hatch. Worse than human babies. When they finally get some feathers, they look less horrible. For the first week or so, they're just gaping mouths.

At some point, they turn into real birds. That's about when you should stop peering in on them because now they can see and when a big hairy head pops into their nest, it causes them to jump out in terror. Yeah...i got a panicked IM from fnord about how he thought he just killed the birds. It's ok! They're fine! In fact, i think the parents were grateful for fnord's help in getting their teens out of the nest for them.

Now, these stupid birds - despite the heart attack they nearly suffered every 10 minutes when they re-remembered the hairless apes that shared their territory, they not only stayed to hatch a second brood later in the summer, but came back this spring.

Fnord and i found this to be incredible enough. But now...

A week ago, we came back from a walk and as we approached our front door, a rabbit ran out of the front flower bed - a flower bed with no flowers or anything of interest for a rabbit to eat. But it didn't run away. It just ran a couple of feet and sat there, looking at us. WTF? That is not normal wild animal behavior. It should have kept running to get away from us. A few days later, the same thing happened again. Today, we discovered why it was hanging around.

It's living under my lenten roses.

That bush is 2 ft from my front door. Why the hell is it living so close to my front door??? That's not a safe, away from humans, place to put your stupid rabbit house!

And it has babies!

Here's my size 6.5 foot for a size comparison.

Babies that hide in the grass. Babies we thought were dead cause the one was too scared to move even when Fnord tapped it with his foot. Babies i nearly stepped on cause i am completely unaware of my surroundings and don't expect to have things in the grass that i need to be worried about stepping on. This is unacceptable.

What's going to happen next year? Am i going to come home to find the deer sitting on my couch watching Netflix?