There is a little bunny, my kids call him Bunbun, who loves the grass in the backyard. This bunny also liked to bite off the white strawberries (not the red ones) and move them to my pumpkin patch. Then, he leaves the strawberry there to munch on my pumpkin leaves. While we have never actually SEEN Bunbun move the berries or eat the pumpkin leaves, we have come up with this “Day in the Life of Bunbun” story that explains the teeth marks in my garden:
Bunbun woke up quite early this morning. He likes to start finding a place to nibble the
grass early in the day, before the sun comes up. He starts in the front yard, under our
cherry tree, in the corner by the brown and rotting fence. He hippity-hops to another,
longer grassy area after Mom pours her coffee. His ears twitch as a car drives by,
delivering our neighbor’s newspaper. Bunbun grows weary of the busy traffic on our
sleepy culdesac, so he hops over to the side yard, scurrying quickly over the hot river
rocks that line the side yard, glances quickly at the trash bins, and hops under the gate
to the backyard. This time, he narrowly escaped the two dogs in the neighbor’s yard.
He breathes hard after the escape from the dogs and hovers around the back of the
gate, waiting for calm. A breeze blows the (ridiculously tall) grass, that just touches the
bottom of Bunbun’s ears. Bunbun slowly strolled to the edge of the wooden garden
bed that holds the strawberry plants. He sniffs and moves over a few yards to the bed
that houses the zucchini and pumpkins. He hops a bit toward the neighbor’s fence and
poops. Then he hops over to the pumpkin plants and nuzzles his nose over the ledge of
the bed and starts nibbling on a leaf.
A crow swoops over his head quickly and caws at the crow in the neighbor’s yard. The
hummingbirds whizzing by are bothered by nothing. They quickly look for their nectar
and move on. The crow perches on the fence between the backyards and waits.
Bunbun hops over to the stone patio and waits.
The sun peaks out from behind the pine trees and throws light onto the patio. Bunbun
hops away from the light toward the taller grass on the south side of the porch.
So, today, I put a fence up around my garden beds. It was 80 degrees with the sun blaring on my neck, sweat trickling down my chest. I had just enough green fencing to wrap around all three beds. Zipties were involved (aren’t they usually?) It was a painstaking fight to the death with the bendy, plastic mesh, but I was victorious. It isn’t pretty, but it will do the job. (Fingers crossed).
This evening, we were all on the back porch having dinner and a squirrel, who my daughter has named Emma, bounded alongside the garden bed fence with something in its mouth. It was a white strawberry.
What?! I was shocked to see that a squirrel would be interested in a berry. I think Emma will be disappointed if she buries it and finds it is not findable when she goes back to look for it. Emma dropped the white strawberry right next to the strawberry that was already in my pumpkin bed. How strange, I thought.
Was it Emma and not Bunbun who was stealing my unripe berries? My perception of what was going on in my backyard had been all wrong.
While this post seems to be about general pests in the garden (maybe not quite to the level of gopher troubles like in Caddyshack), it is about much more. See, I spent so much time thinking about this bunny and how I would keep it from ruining my garden that I did not even allow myself to see that it could have been another animal. A squirrel, in this case, who can jump in and out of my garden fence with ease. Now there is not much I can do with an agile squirrel, especially since my daughter has taken a liking to it so much so that she has named it…..
Perception is based on what you hear and see from where you are standing, but it also depends on what kind of person you are. I am a problem solver. I thought I could solve the strawberry snatcher problem in my own backyard, but I can’t really. I have to learn to live with it. This has been one of the hardest things to understand and embrace with my cancer diagnosis (years ago, now), and yet I still live with it.
I was listening to the NPR host discuss her diagnosis of Stage 4 breast cancer and I honestly could not finish the story. I just couldn’t hear another person’s diagnosis journey. I couldn’t listen to how angry they got, and then how they fell into grief. I felt it deeply, even though the diagnoses were very different. Recently, I was listening to my mother-in-law talk about a story she heard, also on NPR, about two breast cancer survivors, one who chose to have breast reconstruction, and one who chose not to, and their journeys through those choices. I tried my best to listen and ask questions, but my heart was not in it. Sometimes it is hard to listen to other people’s stories who have gone through something that you have without reliving the same emotions you experienced. But I had the wrong perception. I was listening to those stories as a cancer survivor, not just a human. I live so many hours of my life and forget that I am a survivor. It’s not a label I wear all the time, but when I do, I wear it fiercely and proudly.
My perception of these other womens’ stories changes when I listen as a human being rather than a cancer survivor. I remember a time when I would listen to cancer survivor stories with a bit of fear and trepidation, hoping that I would never have that story to tell of my own life. Perception changes with time and experience.
I am trying to be proactive in changing my perception when I hear cancer-related stories, and when it comes to dealing with pests in my garden. My daughter has been instrumental in helping me with this, at least when it comes to the squirrels and bunnies. She often greets Emma and Bunbun and tells them they can have a few things from the garden (leaves and rotten fruit), but to please leave us the fruits of our own labor as well. It isn’t often said, but sometimes I feel that with youth comes a more open and honest approach to living in harmony.
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