Bunnies in His Pockets

He called me over one afternoon while doing yardwork and told me to reach into his pocket. He's my dad, and I love him, but I hadn't a clue what I was going to find. "It's not going to bite!" he half-scolded me. I took a deep breath and plunged my hand into his deep, work-jacket pocket. Inside I found something impossibly soft. I reached in with my other hand and came up with two soft, brown, wild bunnies. He had been weed-eating the fence row and had accidentally destroyed their nest, so he scooped them into the temporary home of his pocket before the cat found them. They were about to leave the nest anyway, and when the coast was clear, they hippity-hopped happily off.

Dad bringing home some kind of orphaned or in-jeopardy animal was nothing new. For a good portion of my childhood, I sat in the back seat of our car with my feet up against the seat for fear that the Box Turtles we had rescued from the road that day would nibble my toes. They wouldn't, of course, but I was a kid with an active imagination. We never took them home as pets; we always released them in the woods out back where they could find lots of food and water--and not get road-squished. To this day, turtles have a soft spot in my heart.

Twice in my life, I have been working in the barn with Dad when a dove flew in and, true to form, couldn't get out. Dad tracked it with his eyes and then, almost casually, reached up and plucked it right out of the air, folding its wings around its body as he brought it down. He held it close to me for a good look; I remember that first one had lovely bright-blue rings around its eyes. It sat, cooing softly in his hands while he taught me the main points of dove anatomy. Then he stepped outside and tossed it into the wind.

Sometime when I was in high school, he woke me up at 6:00 am by laying something wrapped in his flannel shirt on my stomach. Barely cognizant, I was remembering baby bunnies and was immensely confused to feel something coarse and very boney. But when I realized that I had a newborn fawn sitting on my stomach, I came wide awake. Her body was the size of a small rabbit, elevated a foot high on LEGS for days. Dad had been out doing chores and had found her in the middle of the road. Being himself, he stopped to see what it was, rather than driving over it. Due to a number of factors, one being her extreme weakness, he reckoned her an orphan. By 8:00 am she had a name--Daisy--and was being rehabilitated by a local deer farmer. (And if you've ever wondered, Disney's Bambi on ice is exactly accurate to a fawn on a kitchen floor.)

Dad came charging into the house one afternoon calling for me and a blanket. We took off in a cloud of dust to collect the hawk he had seen in the road, beak open, wing dragging. Together, we gently covered the hawk's eyes with the blanket and Dad found the number of a local lady who rehabilitated hawks. Of course he did.

By now, it shouldn't surprise you to know that the cattle on the farm come to him and no one else. It shouldn't surprise you that birds in particular seem to recognize him as one of their own. And it shouldn't surprise you that the farm cat is more of a farm dog than the dog is; he'll hang around while Dad works on fence, catching mice and lolling in the shade. When Dad tosses him in the truck, he happily goes along.

I rather think my Dad a treasure; I think all the local fauna does, too.