With conflicted emotions

I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for small animals.

Especially rabbits.

So it was with conflicted emotions that I dispatched six young bunnies last week.

I didn’t want to be that guy, but couldn’t see any other option.

Ruthie, my year-old springer spaniel, had shown up at the back door with a tiny cottontail in her mouth. I said “drop,” and she deposited the little rabbit at my feet. It appeared unharmed, but was covered with dirt.

Ruth has a soft mouth, the result, not of training, but I suspect stemming from her delight at the noise baby birds and small critters make when she catches them. Like her squeaky toys, however, bite too hard and the squeaking stops.

Consequently, she’s learned to hold them gently in her mouth. They last longer that way.

Picking up the rabbit, I walked out into the yard and was dismayed to see that Ruth had unearthed a shallow burrow under the cedar tree. Little, wiggling bunnies were scattered about the excavation.

There was a time when I would have tried to save them, get them to nurse from a bottle, but I’m old enough now to understand the futility of such an effort. So I scooped them up in a shovel and …

I hoped I wouldn’t dream about them, and kept rationalizing in my head what I had done. They were, after all, in my fenced yard. They’d grow up and eat out of my garden. There’s certainly no shortage of rabbits.

And I’d killed plenty of them before. Rabbits were one of the first game animals I hunted as a kid. Dad showed me how to dispatch a wounded rabbit, holding it by the hind legs and striking it behind the head with the side of my hand.

As difficult as that was, however, it served a purpose. We ate them.

Now here I was killing baby rabbits like they were vermin, only a few days before they opened their eyes.

It would have been easier to let the rest of the dogs out and turn my back on the carnage, but I’d rather discourage my spaniels’ interest in rabbits than encourage it.

So I took care of it.

As distasteful as it was.

Sometimes I have to be that guy whether I like it or not.

Parker Heinlein is at [email protected]