Multiplying Cottontails

Flopsy, Mopsy, Cottontail and Peter have been multiplying in this region during the past few years. One sure sign has been the greater number of road-kills in recent weeks. By the way, don’t handle dead rabbits found along a road unless you have gloves on. They might be infected with the organism causing tularemia, which can be fatal to man.

Most people call this well known, speedy, “now you see ’em, now you don’t” mammal a Rabbit, Cottontail, or Cottontail Rabbit. Call them rabbits if you wish, along with most everyone else, but the experts claim they are really hares. (I don’t wish to get technical with terms – let’s not split hares!)

The eyes of a Cottontail have an extremely wide span of vision.

Rabbits are great diggers as those of you who raise them know so well. Hares, including the Cottontail and Snowshoe Hare in this region, do not dig burrows but occasionally will use, for example, an old Woodchuck hole in which to escape cold or danger.

The wildlife biologists have established, through years of study, 10- or 11-year cycles, especially in the lives of Northern Cottontails. Their population comes to a peak then, perhaps five to six million in Wisconsin, followed by a remarkable decrease in numbers. Involved are several combined factors including changes in weather patterns, disease, stress of overpopulation, and hunting pressure.

Three to four litters of Cottontails are raised annually with from three to eight in a litter. The young, called fawns, are born quite well developed at birth but are blind and naked. Their eyes open in a week and by two weeks they are fully furred and quite frisky. As Joel Chandler Harris wrote about the young rabbits in Uncle Remus and his Friends, “W’en old man Rabbit say ’scoot,’ dey scooted, en w’en ole miss Rabbit say ‘scat,’ dey scatted.”

Years ago one of our friends who lived near the Lake Michigan shore had an interesting experience with a baby Cottontail. She had gone to empty her mailbox one morning and noticed a lady, a stranger, quite sheepishly tiptoeing out of her woods back to her car. When asked if something was wrong or if she could help her, the lady confessed that she had just released a very tiny baby Cottontail in her woods. Quickly she hopped in her car and was gone.

Early the next morning our friend spied the tiny hare near the rocks at the shore. It obviously was too young to be on its own so she easily captured it and took it to her house. There she had made an enclosure on the lawn, provided the skittish little animal with a paper towel covering under which to hide, and soon found that it eagerly accepted milk, clover flowers and especially bits of banana.

The lively Cottontail escaped a few times during the next several days but always returned for food. Obviously it was not one to be kept in captivity even though it snuggled gently in her cupped hands. One of its more apparent requirements was a place in which to hide. In this case a paper towel sufficed. In later life it would seek natural hideouts such as brush piles, culverts, drain tiles or woodpiles.

With the relatively large amount of rain our region has had in recent months, the vegetation here is extremely lush, providing Cottontails with an extremely wide range of food. Included are green leaves, flowers, bark, buds, twigs, grain, fruit and weeds. With the arrival of possibly deep snow of winter limiting this animal’s food, look for the very sharp cuts of their incisors on twigs. Compare this to ragged torn ends on the small tree and shrub growth, so characteristic of the White-tailed Deer.

I have always found the Cottontail very interesting to study and observe. We had plenty of them in our neighborhood in Kewaunee when we were growing up and got to watch them regularly. My Dad had different feelings toward them. Interest and pride in his fruit trees, berries and vegetables spelled trouble for the rabbits. Although he live-trapped many away to new homes in the country, he lost patience more than once and shot a few. He was glad about there being one fewer to raise Cain with his raspberry canes during the winter.

Two or three different Cottontails we’ve seen regularly at our place each had its own hiding place. The one in the front yard feasts on bird food that falls to the ground and it hides beneath one of the woodpiles. Up at the road we often see that one aim for the galvanized culvert pipe beneath our driveway. Our “rabbit-proof” fence at the garden really does keep that one away from our veggies, and it depends on tip-over trees and old rotting stumps in the adjacent woods for concealment.

Much to my pleasure a positive correlation was established between the increase in both Cottontails and Pink Moccasin Lady’s-slipper Orchids. Plants which grow rapidly compete with the orchids for light and win out. The increase of rabbits helps to keep the competing plants, such as evergreen trees, down in number and thus, the orchids fare much better.

Years of study must have gone into the writing of one of my favorite books I own, Brier-Patch Philosophy by William J. Long. It’s an old, hard-to-find book published by Ginn and Company in 1906. But the contents are beautiful to read, along with the superb drawings by Charles Copeland. The introduction is very fitting: “To those who have found their own world to be something of a brier-patch the rabbit dedicates this little book of cheerful philosophy.”

Mr. Long, in discussing the sweet reasonableness of animal thinking, says, “There is this difference between man and a rabbit: The rabbit lives in a brier patch, and his philosophy makes his little world a good place: the man lives in an excellent world, and by his philosophy generally makes it over into the worst kind of a brier patch, either for himself or his neighbors.”

Chances are good that you’ll see more rabbits this year. Slow down, study and enjoy them. Learn from them. It will do you no harm, and with this newly gained brier-patch philosophy you’ll be a better person!