I suppose everyone has their favorite wildlife story, the animal wildlife, not the tavern type of wildlife although I have hundreds of those too.
Some of my favorites which occurred in our backyard in Rhinebeck, NY are quite hard to believe and some may not believe they did, however, I swear to all they did and there were witnesses to some of them.
One of the events that is just hard to fathom is the time when my kids, grown now, and one of my neighbors and I were out playing horseshoes in our backyard. We have 6.5 acres with many trees around an open area of about 1.5 acres where we were playing the horseshoes.
After a short period of time, with the ringing of the horseshoes on the pins and each other and sometimes loud exclamations of joy over a ringer or a topper in the air, three rabbits came out of the woods about 50 feet from us. After a bit of grass nibbling, they began to move around in increasing quickness. After a few more minutes, one rabbit would approach another rabbit nose to nose and just move their tails and ears. All of a sudden, one rabbit would leap straight up into the air and the other rabbit would run underneath that rabbit that leaped in the air. They then would nibble a bit and then return to nose to nose and do the same jumping and running underneath routine again and again. It was, and is, quite hilarious to watch.
We have seen them do this hundreds of times over the years.
After possibly 4-5 times of leaping and running underneath, one started chasing another at a full run all around the yard. As they made a wide, swinging turn they ran right in to our horseshoe area and RIGHT BETWEEN MY NEIGHBOR'S LEGS on one end of the pits AND BETWEEN MY LEGS at the other end of the pits!!!!! Amazing!!!
The first thing I thought of was the story of March Hares, however, this was in June so that did not seem feasible. We just attributed all of this great action to a courtship routine.
More to follow next time. Thanks
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