Getting on with my bad self. Oh, yeah.

Back when I was a girl, eons ago, I was so thin-skinned and tender-hearted (as most young girls are), that I would weep copiously at the drop of a hat.  Our poor father accidentally ran over a rabbit with the car, and I was inconsolable, accusing him of murder and carrying on like a lunatic.  I found a rabbit in the winter that had been hit by a car and carried it home, weeping crocodile tears.  My mother, bless her, sighed and let me put it in a cardboard box.  Then we called our Uncle Jim, her brother the Vet.  Good-natured fellow that he was and is, he came to see what he could do.  He put iodine on a big gash on its haunch which caused the erstwhile prone rabbit to rocket up and out of the box.  And through the house.  I raised a shoebox of orphaned field mice under my bed.  They apparently thrived, as I came home from school one afternoon to discover they'd left the box.  I spent a very fretful month or so, looking for them out of the corner of my eye.

Flash forward to the past three or so years.  Most of my 'tenderness' has been toughened up.  Living through the Year of the Rats, the Year of the Chipmunks, and the Year of the Squirrels has turned my skin to Kevlar and my heart as tough as my neighbor's cooked pork chops.  Oh, yeah.

Last night, getting home from my entertaining commute home, I dropped purse and bag, let Pepper out of lock down, and let the dogs out.  As I stood on the deck, surveying my kingdom (and wondering why the dang Nuggets won't go outside), I saw Lovey paying a great deal of attention to my herb garden.  I looked down and there, nestled in a little wad of furriness, were five very young bunnies.  Ack.  I got Lovey side-tracked (NEVER be without a crunchy bit in your pockets.  Never.) and got the other two oblivious pups on the deck, then hustled them all in the house.  The bunnies' eyes were open - they were half-pint sized - but they obviously had either been led and left by mom, or ventured out on their own and were adrift.  After weighing the consequences (garden - saving bunnies), my heart lurched in the latter direction and I did the Bob-and-Duck in the bed, scooping them up one by one and putting them under the deck.

Cursing at my folly, I did the rest of my chores and then, saving the best for last (dripping sarcasm, here), I went out to feed and water the Nuggets.  Where I discovered that one had been on the receiving end of some vicious feather-pulling.  Its wing was a nasty, bloody mess.  Dang again.  I trotted up to the house, got the first aid kit (hydrogen peroxide, Wound-Kote, swabs, towels, sterile wipes) and trotted back.  Hefting the thing, we went outside in the grass, I got it in a half-Nelson, and spent a great deal of time cleaning and dressing the wound.  Then proceeded to cover both of us in bright purple Wound-Kote.

When I finished, I went inside and rewarded myself accordingly.  With a handful of gingerbread marshmallows.