Where have all the rabbits gone?

By Curt Swarm

Where have all the rabbits gone, long time passing?

The Empty Nest farm has typically been overrun with rabbits for the eight years Ginnie and I have lived here. In fact, they’ve been so thick that when we pull in the driveway at night, and the car lights flash across the blue spruce windbreak, it’s like cockroaches scattering across linoleum when you flip on the lights. I’m not exaggerating.

Of course Buddy loves it. We have a little pen for him outside the kitchen door. When I get up in the middle of the night, Buddy usually gets up with me, and I put him out to take care of business. Sometimes there might be a rabbit or two in his pen. He has a ball chasing them around and around, and even might catch one if they get stuck in the fence trying to escape. Last year was Buddy’s record: three rabbits intercepted. I let him do a little chewing before I take them away from him, as our vet advises.

And I begrudge the fact the rabbits (that Ginnie thinks are so cute) absolutely riddle and destroy much of our vegetation over the winter. The lilacs that I hand planted when we first moved to the farm, the fire bushes that Ginnie gave me for Father’s Day, our McIntosh apple tree, the weeping cherry tree, peach tree, flowering plum, etc., etc., are all victims of gnawing incisor damage that can be quite destructive. I’ve put wire and tubing around a lot of the flora, and it helps some. Barely.

But this year, here in the fall of 2023, the rabbits are gone. Poof! Where did they go? It was just this spring that Ginnie discovered a rabbit nest in her strawberry bed, and Buddy had his fair share of baby bunnies. I kid you not. Rabbits are not skittering at night when we pull in the driveway.

Ginnie and I went rabbit hunting. We drove around the farm yard after dark, with the car lights on bright, looking for those “wascal wabbits.” Nothing. “Maybe it’s wabbittitus,” I told Ginnie, in my Elmer Fudd voice. We did finally see one lone rabbit all by itself in the middle of the spruce grove. Ginnie breathed a sigh of relief.

It reminds me of when we lived in Colorado. The company I worked for built a factory on the Front Range. We were new to Colorado, and didn’t know quite how Iowans were supposed to act in the Wild West. Anywho, the prairie was crawling with thousands (literally) of jack rabbits. The night shift workers at the factory would get off work at midnight and ride around on fenders of pick-up trucks and jalopies, with the headlights on, holding shotguns and pistols, and shoot the bejeebers out of the jacks. I’m not kidding They had a hoot. It’s a wonder someone didn’t get killed.

Then about a foot of snow fell, and the jacks made paths through the snow from one spot to another. Even in broad daylight, when pulling into the parking lot, you could see rabbit ears moving along the deep paths. From an Iowa-boy standpoint, this was an amazing sight. To the locals, it was life as usual.

The next year, the jack rabbits were gone. I mean all gone. Where did they go? I asked one of the locals, and all he said was, “Cycles.” With further prodding, he elaborated, “It’s about a seven year swing. The jacks breed and grow to a large number, then, boom, they’re gone. Dunno if it’s disease or varmints, but it’s been going on since Heck was a puppy.”

I believe that’s what happened here on the Empty Nest Farm. A naturally occurring cycle, like seven years of feast-or-famine. Our McIntosh apple tree didn’t bloom this year either, after years of limb-breaking apple loads.

For everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven...a time to break down and a time to build up... Ecclesiastes 3:1&3

Contact Curt Swarm in Mt. Pleasant at curtswarm@yahoo.com