One spring, my wife and I happened upon a burrow of baby bunnies. From peaceful grazing to predator evasion, this is their story.

Everything started when we saw a large bunny near our house. This species is known as the eastern cottontail. Unbeknownst to us, she was a mother.

A few days later, we discovered an unusual patch of grass covered with fur. This is a rabbit nest. When a mother rabbit is about to give birth, she digs a small, shallow burrow and lines it with vegetation and soft fur from her belly.

When baby bunnies are born, they are blind and hairless. Within a week, they grow fur and open their eyes. The babies we found were literally bright eyed and bushy tailed, so they were probably, at least, one week old. During this stage, their little ears are folded back, and they usually have a white blaze on their forehead called a “milk spot”.

Despite being left alone in their burrow, these babies are not abandoned, and they do not need help. They are the ultimate latchkey kids. To avoid attracting predators, their mother steers clear of the nest, but she still visits her babies once or twice a day.

To capture this behavior, we setup a trail camera next to the nest. You can see the mother bunny tending to her children and providing them with fresh milk. So, as you can see, theses babies are anything but orphans.

Soon, the bunnies started grazing on grass and other greens. Yet, even though they’re eating solid food, they still need their mom’s milk for extra nutrition.

As the days passed, the bunnies became more independent, and some of them started wandering away from the burrow. I found one along the side of our house, and my wife found a few setting up camp under our shed. At this point, I’m not sure if their mom was still feeding them, but they were definitely gorging themselves on grass and weeds.

Unfortunately, these youngsters have a long road ahead of them. Rabbits face endless predators and perils, even as adults. The annual adult survival rate is estimated to be around 20%, and the average lifespan of a wild cottontail is about 15 months.

On the last few days we saw the bunnies, they became targets for two calculated predators. At night, a ravenous opossum caught their scent and followed their trail through the grass. Soon, it discovered them under the shed and attempted to ambush them while they slept. In a flash, one of the bunnies darted out from under the shed, and the opossum chased it.

Not long after that, a black cat arrived and also followed the bunnies’ distinct scent. But, thanks to the opossum, no one was home, so the unlucky cat wandered off into the night.

Once the coast was clear, a lone bunny rocketed back to the shelter of the shed. After this night, we don’t know what happened the bunnies because we no longer saw them in our yard or on the trail cam. Let’s hope and pray that most of them beat the odds and survived!