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An Ugly Solution

Everybody loves a good war. As Mort Sahl said during the Vietnam War, "It's a dirty, rotten little war, but it's the only war we've got, so we ought to be grateful."

 I am in war against a rabbit.  A real rabbit.  Not one of those Easter bunny rabbits, but a genuine, wild, "red in tooth and claw" rabbit:  the kind that attacked Jimmy Carter when Jimmy was in a rowboat.  Jimmy beat the beast back with an oar. I use a coated hardware cloth.  

Last winter--if I may be so brash as to call it that in Tucson--in a fit of frost and glacial outreach, some of the plants in our yard froze their appendages.  I trimmed the plants back, sure and certain that the root systems and stems would send out new branches.  They have:  small, tender, flavorful leaves and stems.  The rabbits found them.  Actually, I think there is only one rabbit, or perhaps a pair.  I am not conversant with rabbit distinctions and unique markings or gender indications.  
This is not my first war.  I have warred against squirrels in trees and bird feeders, against ground squirrels in subterranean lawn pueblos, against starlings, and pack rats and grackles.  I am a war-making machine!

 The problem I have is always the same:  those critters are just trying to make a living.  It isn't easy.  The rabbits in our front yard are hungry and thirsty.  They look good to the coyotes that cruise on by, and the coyotes have their own problems.  

 It is not a war I really want to win.  I want a kind of truce, I guess.  It would be awful to starve the rabbit, even if the long-terms rabbit someday meets a bobcat.  No self-respecting bobcat wants a weak wobbly wabbit.  

 Maybe most wars are like that.  I can rest easy with a war against polio, or smallpox, but I don't think most wars are worth waging.  I am a child of my time:  I have built a fence around our front-yard plants, such as we have between here and Mexico, but that reminds me too much of a former neighbor who had aluminum fences around her saguaros, to defend them against the sun.  It was an ugly solution.  

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