by Jen Pennington

In the early days of our working on our property we would come across the usual wildlife suspects, voles, frogs, deer, garter snakes, and the occasional rabbit. We could hear the coyotes at night howling and knew they were in the area. My husband Bob is like a magnet for animals. It’s pretty funny for a guy who is allergic to cats and dogs. Every time I moan about wanting a dog, he says, “honey, just think of the animals of the forests like they’re our outdoor pets.” Yeah…not buyin’ it, Bob.

My original goal for the forest was to be the guardian of small rabbits. I love rabbits. Yes, I am a sucker for the fuzzy little beast despite some of its peskier garden behaviors. I had them as a kid and as an adult had a house-trained dutch rabbit for eight years. But I also love birds, so using some of what I learned from our forest stewardship class, I began to clean up parts of our forest, limbing up the large hemlocks, spruces, and firs to create flyways for birds. We got what we set out to do. The unfortunate part that I sort of forgot about, was that we had in effect created the perfect hunting grounds for owls, eagles, and hawks. I had this horrible picture in my mind of small animals running for cover while an air force of deadly accurate dive-bombers came after them.

For a while there it was pretty gruesome. We would find various parts of small unrecognizable fuzzy parts in our paths. But nothing can prepare you for the cry of a 230 lb., 6’5” man screaming my name in the woods as if he has just chopped off his leg with a chainsaw. I came running only to find my husband with no blood on him anywhere but just this horrified look on his face. I was completely puzzled and then I saw what he had in his hands. He had accidentally stepped on a baby bunny that couldn’t have been more than a day old. He was holding it in his hands offering it to me like Lenny to George in John Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men.” It had a tiny spot of blood on it’s nose, and while I know full well you’re supposed to leave animals like this to nature, this was not nature’s fault, it was man’s. We also knew the mother was dead, found about twenty-five feet away with its head missing. We basically convinced ourselves we were its only hope, mostly to calm Bob down who was just beside himself with guilt.

Our neighbor helped us look up on the Internet what to do with a baby rabbit, and we learned we could feed it some kitten replacement milk. We also learned that you had to stimulate its anus with a Q-tip so it could pass a micropoop. Lovely. But the real irony was that we drove it seventy miles back to Seattle where I found a local vet who yelled at me and threatened to call the Fish & Game Warden. What’s that expression? Ah yes, no good deed goes unpunished. The gal behind the desk felt bad and gave me the name of the Sarvey Wildlife Center. Sarvey rehabilitates injured and orphaned wildlife in the Pacific Northwest. Animals receive immediate medical care, food, and shelter and stay until they are ready for release back into the wild.

It was getting harder to let go of little “Nettles,” as we named it. Its little ears had popped up and damn it was cute. It began drinking more milk and moving around. The next day Bob drove it North to Arlington. Another 100-mile trek (his penance for stepping on the thing). When he got there he told me it was like the land of misfit animals. An eagle with one wing, limping three-legged animals, a one-eyed bird and the like. He sat in the waiting room with a little kid who had a squirrel in a box. Bob handed Nettles off to a kind woman there and told her about how we found the mother. She immediately put it next to her skin where it could hear her heartbeat and said to us, you must have owls. They like the head. It has all the yummy parts. So after driving roughly 300 miles for this ordeal, and paying a fifty buck donation in our quest to save a little wildlife, the mildlife could also sleep that night. We’re not sure what happened after that, but we knew we did the best we could do.

Oddly enough the following weekend Bob was hooking up a water spigot with a long 100-foot garden hose. I was walking towards him when an enormous Barred Owl swooped down above his head within three feet of his bald spot. Bob didn’t even see him. I couldn’t believe my eyes. It then perched in a branch above his head and turned its head as if to say him, “Dude, you took my Scooby-snack.”