As if avoiding the epidemic is not challenging enough, my garden has been invaded by terrorist rabbits. Why do I call them terrorists?  Because just like human terrorists, they know no bounds.  I love flower gardening. These rabbit invasions started in June, when the flower garden is full of blossoms. They have been eating the flower buds of plants. I hired a Hampton gardener to grow poppies for me from seed under grow lights in her home because poppy seeds have not successfully germinated in my soil. I carefully planted each seedling she grew, but as the flower buds were ready to open, the rabbits ate each one of them. The rabbits started devouring my garden with the carnation seedlings I bought through a garden catalog. The seedlings grew to healthy plants and set their flower buds. As the first bud was ready to open, snip by Mama Rabbit. That angered me so much I asked a Mennonite friend if he had have-a-heart traps. He said he did, and he set them up for me on the lawn between the strip of woods that the rabbits come out of and my garden.  He baited them with carrots. The rabbits came into the traps, ate the carrots, left thank you notes and exited the traps, all without setting them off.  One day I actually saw a rabbit eating a carrot at that part of the trap that is opposite the opening into the trap.  She climbed over the platform that is supposed to close the trap door when she ran to the end of the trap where the carrots were. She watched me suspiciously since I am a Congregationalist, not a Mennonite. She stayed at the end of the trap with the carrots, and I shoved the trap door shut fiercely. Somehow she seemed unfazed and just kept eating carrots. I called the trap owner, and he came over after work to pick up the trap and let the rabbit out of the trap, but far away from my garden. When I lived in Scotland, my husband grew the vegetables, I grew the flowers, and the cats ate the rabbits. The last of my cats died last fall. My husband set have-a-heart traps for the woodchucks.  When they were caught, my husband drowned them in the cage in a nearby brook.  Cruel? No, not when you are an organic vegetable grower, and your wife blanches and freezes all those vegetables. It was merely execution of a vegetable thief.

So my Mennonite friend oiled the traps in the hope that would make it easier to catch the rabbits. But the rabbits are atheists, so they continue to go in, eat some carrots, leave and then eat my flowers for dessert. They stopped leaving thank you notes.  In fact, after the traps were set up, in revenge they then ate all the leaves and blossoms off of two new plants for my garden. I am kind of shy, so I have been afraid to ask my Mennonite friend if his traps are not merely have-a-heart, but actually pacifist. Should I ask him? Unless they are pacifist traps, I do not really see any point in trying to convert the traps from atheist to a meaner denomination.