We’re celebratin’ 2011, the Year of the Rabbit, here at Butter Side Down. All of the bunnies wish you a Happy, Hoppy, New Years.

Me too.

He’s made it all the way! Here’s Mr. Awesome, all fluffy and furred and happily munching down some mighty tasty weeds. I can’t thank wildlife rehabber Rebekah Weiss enough for her expert and dedicated care that’s led to this happy success.

In my (admittedly) biased opinion, he’s still the cutest little cottontail baby bunny we’ve ever seen, although his adopted littermates are totally adorable too.

Here’s the blended family, including Mr. Awesome and his adopted siblings, all the same age and all raised by Beka at Aves Wildlife Alliance wildlife hospital. Mr. A’s two little baby bunny siblings were rescued and brought to Aves the same week as Mr. Awesome, and are the same age. So, Beka raised them together as a bunny family. Boy, don’t they look happy and healthy?

I can’t stop grinning.

Here’s one more shot of the sibs.

The photos, btw, were all taken at Aves by Jill Wilke, and are shared here by permission (copyright © 2010 Jill Wilke). Thank you, Jill, for letting us use them. We really appreciate it!

Mr. Awesome and his sibs will released shortly to a three acre site that is a pesticide free zone (no nasty lawn chemicals). They are all about 200 grams each, and, as you can see, doing really well.

If you’d like to help out Aves Wildlife Center, you can contact them through their site. Donations are welcome and used to cover the expenses of caring for orphaned and injured wildlife of all kinds. Go on — skip the lattes for a month and help raise a baby rabbit or rehabilitate a redtail hawk that survived a too-close encounter with a car. Every penny helps!

And again, thank you Beka. The work you do is, well, awesome!

We’ve had 14.5″ of snow since last night.

Fourteen and a half. Inches. Of. Snow.

The local Fox TV meteorologist says that it’s the seventh largest snowfall recorded for a 24-hour period since the State started keeping records. It’s a bit… much… even for us.

The wind was incredible, too, so we have some amazing drifts, a few more than three feet high.

Right now, Michael is testing out our new snow thrower, creating a path for the bunnies to get around the yard more easily to get to his shop. It’s a powerful but small electric model that is a replacement of the one we bought last year. That one had a factory defect, which made it eat its own drive-belts like candy. We finally boxed the thing up after repeatedly fixing it, shipped it to the manufacturer and asked for a new one. Within two business days we had a brand-spanking new replacement in our frustrated paws. That’s my idea of how customer service should resolve legitimate problems with defective items!

We filled the feeders before the storm hit, and I’m glad we managed to get that done. We had a rush of cardinals as evening set in, looking for dinner. They’re the first birds I’ve seen all day, as the heavy snow and winds have sent all the wildlife into deep cover.

One thing this storm has done: I always want a white Christmas, even if it’s only an inch or two of snow. It just makes it seem like “Christmas,” somehow, to have snow.

After today, I think that’s covered, for this year at least!

Yeah. Right.

Welcome to Winter 2009-2010.

On to life in general…

Posting has been patchy to non-existent here for too long. My apologies. Life happens.

I’ll go back to more posting when the needs of daily living take up a tad less than 110% of my time and energy.

Being disabled sucks.

‘Nuff said about ‘dat.

Bunnies are fat, furry and fine, btw. And totally put out at all this white stuff.

All together now: awwwwwwwwww, poor bunnies!

I’m viewing it as just another example of How The Universe Enjoys Picking On Me.

Harumpf.

In hopes that both problems are now resolved to the point of limping along, I thought I’d give a bunny update.

BB is not only fine, she’s grown into a favorite of mine. She’s definitely from Stewart’s lineage: slightly smaller than average, with the patchy coloration from his line and quirky as can be. She also is easy to pick out from the horde (yes, we have a horde of bunnies–which is somewhat more than a litter and somewhat less than a thundering herd) as she has a little white crescent-shaped mark on her forehead. We’ve noticed that many of our bunnies have this as babies, but BB is the only one who hasn’t had hers shed out as she grew.

Michael asked me last week if perhaps Stewart had passed along a gene for “overly friendly wild bunny” to his descendents. I’m thinking maybe so…

Our bunnies are typical wild bunnies around neighbors and strangers that come into our yard, but are perfectly happy to hop all around us, to the point where we really do have to shoo them out of the way when we are doing things.

I told BB last week, when I was poking around under our spruce tree and she appeared, that she was supposed to hop away from the scary humans when they were doing something in the yard, not to hop TO me to investigate what I am doing. She yawned.

YAWNED.

Then she proceeded to groom herself and finally hopped away several moments later to nibble on a patch of late clover.

We’ve had several other batches of bunnies arrive, and one of the latest also has the “friendly” gene in spades. I’ve named him “Dude,” as he is the most laid-back yard bunny to date. He’s so reluctant to move from “his” spot when I come across him that I’ve actually had to reach down and threaten to nudge his little rump to get him out of the way. As he hops off, he clearly slings over his shoulder, “Hey, Dude, what’s the deal? That was my spot!” Hence, his name.

We have one other, of the five originally in BB’s litter, who has also remained with us. We call her “Snug” as she likes to snuggle herself down into the grass. She has “radar” ears that are constantly moving from one direction to another, and has a particular fondness for Michael. She will sit on the stoop of his shop when he’s inside it, or snuggle down in the pathway from the house to the shop, wait there and then refuse to move when he appears. Me she just tolerates.

Most of the other bunnies from this year’s crop have hopped to other abodes, or been lost to predators when they made mistakes that left them vulnerable. If they hadn’t, we would be awash in bunnies by this point!

In terms of other regulars for this summer, we’ve had a redtail hawk that checks out the yard regularly, to the great consternation of the furry folk and the songbirds. We also have a Coopers hawk that flies through the yard at about shoulder height, scaring the bejabbers out of me every single time, and has even roosted on the back of one of our lawn chairs. The great horned owls are back, too, giving concerts, and with the oncoming winter I see bald eagles often.

And lest I forget to mention them, the Canada geese are starting to fly through in flocks that number in the hundreds, landing on the river to form gatherings of thousands of geese nightly. Two days ago a small flock flew so close to the house that I could hear the beat of their wings, and see individual feathers.

Oh, and one other thing… it’s already been snowing. Hasn’t stuck, yet, but it’s truly snowed–several times now.

That doesn’t bode well for a nice easy winter.