the battle of the bunnies

The bunnies are winning.  The new anti-rabbit gate was installed, and the gales had passed so we set the camera at the top of the back garden for a couple of nights to see if the gate had done the trick.  Obviously we were hoping that it had, but we were rapidly disabused of that notion.  Rabbits appeared soon after dark on both nights, appearing as blurry black and white images on the infra-red camera, their eyes standing out as glaring white spots.  They were still hopping around in glorious technicolour well after dawn.

It was not an entirely random display.  They consistently appeared from the direction of the hedge, and headed back that way as they disappeared out of shot.  We wriggled our way among the mature shrubs to the back of the border that runs the length of the garden and surveyed the hedge line.  The double run of wire netting enclosing the hedge, professionally installed by the man who planted the hedge over twenty years ago, all appeared to be solid and intact.  He did a good job, that contractor, and used good quality posts.  However, we did find a weak spot right at the top of the slope, where we'd left a gap in the hedge in case we ever needed to get heavy machinery into the back garden.  The single run of netting installed by us had slumped, and it would have been possible for rabbits to hop over it.

I found a spare piece of netting, and stapled it fast to the fence post, a handy stake and an elder that had sprung up in the hedge line.  I wouldn't normally staple netting to my shrubs, but regarded the elder as a weed, and couldn't face trying to knock a post in at that moment.  The soil there is phenomenally stony because an old track lies underneath (it was the access to the integral garage when the house was built.  We do not keep cars in the garage, only lawnmowers) and a large sea buckthorn would have got in the way of the hammer.

Unfortunately today's check of last night's proceedings on the camera showed that there were still rabbits in the border, appearing and disappearing from the direction of the hedge.  We both prowled up and down the hedge line looking for obvious holes, and agreed that there were none at the top of the garden.  This made the bottom of the garden the prime suspect, where the contractor's fence comes to an end before the ditch.  It might be that the rabbits were coming in at the bottom of the slope, and using the cover of the border to move uphill rather than travelling that far in the open.  The Systems Administrator reset the camera pointing down the hedge line, on the grounds that then we'd see if they were coming into shot from downhill, or appearing from behind the camera.  One night should be enough, given that they seem to be here every night, then we can station the camera at the bottom of the garden and try and discover their movements around the area of the bog bed.  I know they've been active down there, because there are scrapes as well as droppings.

Forget Peter Rabbit.  Forget Watership Down, Hazel and Bigwig and all that crew.  Put Flopsy, Mopsy and Cottontail from your mind.  Rabbits are not cute.  In a garden context they are vermin. They have grazed down the leaves of all the Crocus tommasinianus in the bottom lawn, when everybody knows they need to be left to die down naturally for the bulbs to build their strength up, and eaten most of the flower buds off the Pulmonaria 'Blue Ensign' (the bluest of blues, a superb form).  If you see the Easter Bunny, shoot it.