mysterious and perplexing events on eliot street

the number of bunnies we have at the farm continues to change regularly. just last week, many of the young bunnies (including evie's beloved woodrow) were, ahem, errr, done away with. we still have plenty of baby bunnies left.

this mystery does not concern the baby bunnies, but rather two older, more stately rabbits in the cages closest to the gate of the rabbit enclosure. i went to feed the first rabbit on sunday morning and realized the cage was empty. and so was the second one. there was no sign of visiting predators- the dusting of snow would have clearly revealed any pawprints. i could see tracks from matt and jake who had checked on the bunnies on saturday afternoon. it was possible that there were other footprints in the snow, but before i could really put on my sherlock homes hat (i had to run inside to find both that and my pipe), matt and i had stamped out all the evidence with our own footprints.

two missing bunnies isn't a huge deal on our casual hippy-run farm. one time, matt saw somebody unloading snowy the goat from the back of an SUV. apparently, the gentleman was a board member and had taken snowy to the blessing of the animals at his church. roll with it. we thought perhaps the bunnies had been loaned out for some sort of new year's day celebration- is 2007 the year of the rabbit? we figured the bunnies would show up later in the day. after all, if someone wanted to steal a bunny for a pet, they would take one of the precious baby bunnies.

a little later in the morning, a woman drove up in a volvo station wagon. she was probably in her late sixties and was quite flustered because when she looked out her front door that morning, there were two bunnies sitting on her front porch. her husband thought he had heard the doorbell ring just after midnight. perhaps the bunnies rang it, after somehow opening their cages, closing the doors behind themselves, levitating over the snow, and hopping a half mile down eliot street and up onto this woman's doorstep. they then became too frightened to hop back off again and instead spent the morning eating carrots and mating on the porch. or perhaps a prank has been played. i can't imagine the motive for this prank. i guess we should just be grateful they didn't take a cow. it would have been hard to fit that in the back of the dodge colt vista for the trip home.