A mother rabbit has made an unfortunate choice in real estate.

That's what we say around here when an animal has moved her brood into our yard/garden area, which doubles as the beagle hunting grounds. My father has found other bunches of baby bunnies and had to relocate them (without touching them) safely out of reach of the beagle.

These baby bunnies are in the garden, which is fenced, but the slats are wide enough that the beagle can poke her head in. I think a bunny must have been wandering around the little patch, and got within reach of beagle lips (and jaws . . . ), because beagle withdrew from the garden with a bunny in her mouth.

I was standing at the back door when I realized what was happening. "Oh, no! She has a bunny!" And I ran out to the garden, realizing that by the time I got to her, surely the bunny would be fatally wounded, and then was I going to have to figure out a way to humanely dispose of bunny?

You have to know the mother in me winced mightily at this.

What ensued wasn't really comic; my father and I both chased her around the yard, but she actually ate the bunny. Woe were we.

I was also afraid that a raw, furry bunny wouldn't settle so well in her stomache, and that we'd be seeing bunny again, but beagle seems to have kept it down.

There are still rabbits out in the garden, and other than putting up more fencing to prevent her from pushing through the slats, we don't know what else to do besides hope momma bunny counts her bunnies and decides she's better off in another yard.