Animal Farm

There's something inherently creepy about large numbers of animals gathered together. And I'm not talking about herd animals, because that's expected. I'm talking about animals that you normally see solitary, suddenly grouped together looking like they're having a conference.

At the beginning of spring Xris and I happened to look out her living room window to see literally HUNDREDS of robins gathered in her yard poking around in the dirt for bugs. I looked it up online and apparently we were privy to a very rare sighting, a leg of the robin migratory path. While it was cool, it also had a Hitchcock element to it that we could have lived without.

Before we sold the pool we had a frog problem. There were about 6 small frogs gathered on the sides of the pool, staring at us, and while that might not sound like a problem, the fact that one or all of them had laid hundreds of eggs in the pool water was in fact a large problem. The fact that my big, strong husband wouldn't catch the frogs bare handed and let me do it instead was a smaller problem, because it was at least humorous.

And this morning I got up and went outside to smoke, turned the corner of the house and found 3 rabbits in the back area where the pool was, all staring at each other, and while rabbits might not typically be thought creepy, several communing together was kind of disturbing. They eventually hopped off in different directions, and I assume it was to gather their respective pieces of the Acme Dog Destroyer. Or maybe one was calling in the order.

So I'm pretty certain we had all better look out. Even animals that normally don't "play well with others" can band together to complete a common goal, and before you tell me that rabbits are in fact social animals, let me ask you a question....

When was the last time YOU actually saw more than one wild rabbit in your yard, standing less than 3 feet apart, facing each other?