Little Creatures Teaching Big Lessons

“Anything will give up its secrets if you love it enough.”

-George Washington Carver

Last year, at the small multi-age school where I teach, we started a Project on the Shrub-Steppe.  Partway through this exploration of the ecosystem that we are surrounded by, but often know so little about, we met one of it’s inhabitants that completely captured our hearts and imaginations.

In the middle of the desolate, desert looking hills of Central Washington, deep in the midst of the diverse and wild land covered with Sagebrush, lives a little bunny that has been on the brink of extinction.  The Columbia Basin Pygmy Rabbit is genetically distinct from other Pygmy Rabbits and once thrived in a large, connected, healthy shrub-steppe habitat.  They are one of the few animals that eats and digests sagebrush and they live on this plant to make it through the long winters.  As the kids loved to tell people once we started learning about these little critters, “THEY ARE SO SMALL YOU CAN HOLD ONE IN THE PALM OF ONE HAND!”  The kids’ faces would often scrunch up as they shared this fact with visitors, almost overwhelmed just by the idea of that much cuteness.

The Columbia Basin Pygmy Rabbit is cute, but don’t let that fool you, they are also capable of big work.  They dig their own burrows under the sagebrush forests.  It’s impressive to see the amount of dirt these tiny little bunnies can move and their burrows are often homes and passageways for other underground animals as well. 

I have spent the better part of my life in Central Washington and until last year, I never knew these amazing little animals existed.  As we learned about them at school, it was like our collective love for them started feeding itself and soon we are all completely enamored with them.  We may have gotten sidetracked from the bigger project for a bit, just to really lean into our exploration.  The more we learned about them, watched videos of them, and imagined and told our ideas of their stories, the more we loved them.

Through our learning, we came across the work of the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife and their Columbia Basin Pygmy Rabbit Recovery effort.  This program has been in operation since 2001 and through a series of iterative evolutions has brought the population from 16 remaining rabbits to several hundred.  While our project on the shrub-steppe habitat reached its culmination, our fascination with these sweet rabbits endured.

I signed up on the Volunteer portal for the Pygmy Rabbit project and after missing some opportunities due to my schedule and heat cancellations, I found myself driving towards the Quincy Department of FIsh and Wildlife Office one Tuesday morning at 4 am.  I could hardly contain my excitement, having barely slept the night before.  I was joining in on a Pygmy rabbit capture and relocation that day and was going to have the opportunity to possibly see one of these little rabbits in real life, plus learn more about the people that were working so closely with them. 

The Pygmy Rabbit enclosures have one fence around a large area and when it is time to relocate the kits to a new enclosure or a wild habitat, the process of rounding them up takes some skill and time.  One of the Biologists on the project walked around the enclosure with me, pointing out the burrows (so Big for such a little rabbit), piles of their tiny poop (so CUTE), dust holes that they liked to create to roll around in (so funny to imagine) and small attempts at burrows built by kits as they were learning how to pygmy rabbit (ADORABLE).  As we walked around in their world, observing the evidence of their everyday lives, my cup already full of so much love them, spilled over.  

Next we begun the process of rounding them up.  Traps were placed over the main burrow entrances and exits and we walked around in a group, holding large rectangular net build out of PVC pipe.  As we canvassed the ground, eventually a rabbit would hop by and we would communicate with each other moving quietly and quickly to surround it, so it would eventually hop into a net.  Once the rabbit was caught, she was lifted gently into a pillowcase.  We were instructed to let the rabbit rest on our arm as we walked towards the top of the enclosure holding the top of the pillowcase.  I don’t think I’ll ever forget the feeling of wonder and connection as I carried a pygmy rabbit, resting on my arm.

So many thoughts poured through my mind and I wonder what kind of nonverbal communication was flowing between us.  I felt so much awe for this little creature sitting on my arm, whose species was tiny and mighty, yet struggling to survive amidst the habitat loss, wildfires, drought, and disease brought by human populations.  I felt deep gratitude to be holding this one, and I hoped that somehow they could sense that the humans here were working tirelessly and lovingly on their behalf.  That two minute walk seemed to last for much longer as I took each step carefully, with intention and attention.  I tried to quiet my own mind and sense the warm little body on my arm, wondering what it might want me to know.

We continued our work catching 4 more kits as the sun rose higher in the sky and we all started to get hot and tired.  The lead Biologist on the project announced that he thought we had all of the kits rounded up from that enclosure, but we were going to do one more grid like sweep of the entire place before we left.  I was feeling my early wake up and lack of food and water as we walked, but was so overwhelmed by the feeling of being in that place with those ones, that I didn’t really mind.  As we got close to the end of our sweep, I noticed a beautiful burrow coming up from under a sagebrush plant.  As I neared it, a Pygmy Rabbit stuck his head out and looked right out me.  We held each other’s gaze for what was only a few seconds but it felt like time stopped.  Somehow I couldn’t announce that I saw him right away, and it almost felt like a mutual knowing passed between us.  I had been listening to a beautiful podcast called the Emerald by Joshua Schrie on my drive to Quincy that morning and in that moment a beautiful quote he had shared from George Washington Carver filled the space. “Anything will give up it’s secrets if you love it enough.”