3/8/06 There goes Peter Cotton-tail...

So yesterday I was puttering around the back porch, refilling my bird feeders, and I found half of a rabbit under the porch. A big rabbit. And the left half. I don't know where the right half went, and the part that was left was not all in one piece. Luckily, he'd been there long enough that he wasn't still gooey, and it was mostly just fur and feet. When I first saw it, I was like, "Oh look! A rabbit nest where the momma bunny has lined it with fur...and her back leg". Needless to say, EWWWWW! I made Tony come out and scoop it up with a shovel and throw it away. What worries me is what killed the rabbit, and how it came to be under our back porch. The rabbit in question was almost the size of a small cat, and literally ripped limb from limb, so I don't think a cat could have done this. Besides, cats will break its neck, but they don't usually rip it apart. That makes me think dog, but we have a fenced yard, so how did a dog get back there? And back out again? Tony suggested maybe a raccoon, which he says would be both big enough to rip a rabbit apart, and agile enough to scale our fence. He also says they would have the disposition to tear Peter Rabbit limb from limb. (By the way, did I mention that raccoons will be the next exhibit at the local zoo? Keep your hands and feet in the car at all times). Whatever it is, I have given it the newspaper-worthy name, "The Suburban Killer" and am seriously concerned about Mason being out on the screened in porch by himself. True, there's screen between him and The Suburban Killer, and he could run back inside the house if he felt threatened, but he's a house cat. How would he know he was in danger? He's never felt threatened by anything scarier than the vacuum cleaner. I could lock the cat door so he couldn't get out, but he loves being out there, and closing it off would create one very ticked off kitty cat...one who knows where I sleep. Anyway, the whole point of having a screened in porch was so that the boys could enjoy it. Tony says that the cats should be fine...he doesn't think the Suburban Killer would want to get through the screen, even if he could, and I guess he is the resident raccoon expert. However, if I find another dismembered animal under the porch, we're going into extreme lock-down, and I don't care who stands on my head in the middle of the night and fusses.