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Dumb Bunny.
Sometimes in the past, the above appellation may have been applied to you in a pejorative way because of something you did, but as I am about to tell you, the moniker was probably ill applied.
For almost all the time we have lived in southern Bradford, I have grown a patch of beans to provide the family with green/yellow beans during the summer and dry beans for the winter. Due to the vast number of hares abounding on our property (sufficient to have rabbit stew every other day in the year, if only my wife allowed me to hunt them), I fence that garden with a sturdy mesh that I found by the highway. I suspect that the mesh had fallen off a truck.
That fencing has been most effective in keeping the hares at bay. Over the years, the hares have often been seen hopping around the fence, probing for a way to get in. To them the visible, succulent greenery must appear to be Edenesque. The lush green bean varieties, all with healthy leaves and pods, are agonizingly almost within reach.
Until this year the hares have been kept out. They failed to solve the fence.
Humans, every now and then, produce someone bright and/or unusual who comes along and makes humanity look at the world in a different way, be it a Darwin, Einstein, or Madame Curie. So too the hares. This year an ‘Einsteinian’ hare came along who solved the puzzle and is teaching the solution to others.
To remove the stones holding the netting in place, the hare ran repeatedly into the netting until the stones bounced off allowing it to crawl the underneath. To stop that method, I applied a layer of soil to the bottom four inches of the netting and that kept them out for almost a week. Then one morning I saw it chew a hole through the netting and slip inside. I tied up the netting and rested happily, until I discovered half the soya beans gone and another hole (one to get in, one to get out?). How can one not admire that animal?
Either the same hare or another bright one managed to eat my wheat plants despite the latter having a two-foot mesh around it. As observed, it simply reared on its hind legs and delicately scissored through the stems to eat them and the seed heads. By the time I saw that technique applied more than half the wheat was gone. In my ignorance I had blamed a deer (which I had seen come through the yard) for the damage. With the ground dry and hard there were no tell-tale tracks.
To return to where I started, if ever someone calls you a ‘dumb bunny’, just accept it with a knowing smile, because what they really said in their underestimation of you is that you are a strong analytical problem solver.
Be ye like the hares.
Albert Wierenga
Bradford
