Dad's Very Own Peter Cottontail

This weekend, while we were down visiting at Mom and Dad’s, we perchance caught a glimpse of Dad’s unofficial “pet” rabbit. We’d heard that Dad had a pet rabbit that occasionally visited him in the yard, but we hadn’t seen it for ourselves. As work in the garden progressed, we happened to glance off in the distance to a neighbors shed, and what to our wondering eye should appear but our grey, fuzzy friend with its two floppy ears! Being that it is a lop rabbit, it must have been tame at one point (we don’t have wild lop-eared bunnies in Utah). However, with the passage of time, he has become skittish around people. Dad has purchased rabbit food and sets some out for him each morning, along with a sliced apple (any food left by the bunny gets eaten by deer, apparently). The bunny has learned that Dad is the deliverer of all things delicious and has allowed Dad to get fairly close, but he has yet to touch him. I asked Dad if he had named it, and he said that he just calls him “Nunny”.

As we continued working in the yard, Nunny made a mad dash to the shed in our yard (probably because he was hungry and came to eat the rest of his food). From a distance, I was able to snap some good pictures. When I got up close, and attempted to hand him a chunk of apple, he darted underneath the shed. Little by little, I was able to coax him out just enough so his nose poked out. In fact, I got him to snatch a piece of apple from my outstretch fingers at one point. Nunny has been caught munching on Dad's spices, so we'll see if he lives up to his progenitor Peter Cottontail and gets caught snatching tomatoes and strawberries. I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for animals, but I have an even softer spot for animals that keep Dad company. Nunny does that quite well!