Finding a Nest in the Garden: A Warning About Infant Rabbits

Dear Tom from exactly six months ago.

Right now, you're standing in the middle of the back garden holding a half-eaten Hobnob, wearing only one wellington boot, while your two-year-old twin daughters scream with a terrifying mixture of joy and homicidal affection at a patch of disturbed grass. You’ve just uncovered a small, pulsating pile of brown fluff while attempting to mow the lawn, and your immediate instinct is to panic, assume the absolute worst, and launch a full-scale wildlife rescue operation.

I'm writing to tell you to stop, put the biscuit down, and back away slowly before you ruin everything.

You're about to make several terrible assumptions about wild infant wildlife, mostly informed by a lifetime of consuming Beatrix Potter propaganda and the arrogant human belief that we know how to parent better than nature does.

The mother hasn't abandoned them

Your first thought, as Florence aggressively points a chubby finger at the tiny creatures, is that their mother has been taken by an urban fox and these poor souls are now your responsibility. You're already calculating how much a heat lamp costs on Amazon.

The truth is, mother rabbits are just employing a childcare strategy I occasionally fantasise about during the darker moments of sleep deprivation: she leaves the kids in a shallow ditch covered in dead grass and only visits them twice a day. Usually at dawn and dusk. She isn't dead, she's just deliberately ignoring them so she doesn't draw predators to the nest. It feels horribly negligent by our modern helicopter-parenting standards, but apparently, it works.

I vaguely remember wondering what the proper scientific name for these little vibrating lumps of anxiety was, assuming it was 'bunnies' or something equally twee. As it turns out, our exhausted local vet, Sarah, informed me that they're actually called kits or kittens, which is frankly unnecessarily confusing when you're frantic on the phone to the RSPCA trying to explain that you haven't found cats in your lawnmower path.

Staring into the grassy abyss

The urge to intervene is overpowering when you've two toddlers demanding you "fix the babies." But evaluating whether they actually need your help requires a level of restraint I didn't possess.

Our vet suggested that if their little bellies are round and plump—like tiny, furry Pillsbury Doughboys—and they feel warm to the touch, they're being fed and you should leave well enough alone. If they're the size of a tennis ball and have the physical capacity to run away from you, they're essentially teenagers in the rabbit world and definitely don't need you hovering over them with a dropper.

I wish I could tell you that you reacted calmly to this information. Instead, six months ago, you panicked because one looked a bit wrinkly, and you hastily stripped Matilda of her Sleeveless Organic Cotton Baby Bodysuit in a desperate attempt to use it as a makeshift thermal rescue blanket. I mean, the bodysuit is genuinely brilliant—it has those excellent envelope shoulders that usually save me from wrestling a screaming child during an explosive nappy incident, and the organic fabric is supposedly incredibly breathable—but the wild animal absolutely didn't need it. The rabbit just sat there looking confused, while Matilda stood in the October wind wearing only her nappy, eating a fistful of topsoil.

Why we're absolutely not getting a pet

Because you're an idiot prone to romanticising the countryside while living in Zone 3 London, this entire backyard saga will briefly make you consider buying a domestic rabbit. You'll think it might teach the girls responsibility, or empathy, or some other developmental buzzword.

Banish this thought immediately. A two-year-old and a prey animal with a spine made of chalk is an equation that ends in tears, exorbitant vet bills, and deep psychological trauma for everyone involved. Toddlers are loud, erratic, and fundamentally terrifying. Rabbits are highly anxious vegans who can literally break their own backs if they kick out in fear while being improperly held by a child who just wants to "squeeze the bunny."

We tried to channel the twins' sudden obsession with animals by throwing toys at the problem. We got them the Gentle Baby Building Block Set, hoping they'd build a little house for their imaginary pets. They're alright, those blocks. They're made of this soft rubber stuff that doesn't hurt when you step on them at 3 am, and they've numbers on them that the girls entirely ignore. But honestly, most of the time they just get lobbed at the patio doors while I'm trying to drink a lukewarm cup of tea and question my life choices.

The absolute nightmare of artificial feeding

Let’s say the mother really has been hit by a car, and you genuinely have an orphaned situation on your hands. You will inevitably find yourself desperately scrolling on your phone to figure out the dietary menu for a wild kit that has lost its mum. You will assume you can just warm up some cow's milk from the fridge.

Don't do this. Cow's milk will apparently send their fragile little digestive tracts into immediate, fatal shock.

If you ever find yourself backed into a corner trying to figure out exactly what an orphaned rabbit needs to consume, the answer is a highly specific, mathematically complex mixture of goat's milk, kitten milk replacer, and a prayer to whatever deity oversees amateur wildlife rehabilitation. It has to be heated to exactly 105 degrees, and you've to feed them while they're sitting strictly upright.

If you cradle them on their back like a human infant—which is exactly what every muscle in your parent-brain is screaming at you to do—they can aspirate the fluid into their lungs and die of pneumonia. It's a minefield of potential disaster wrapped in soft fur.

But the feeding isn't even the worst part. The worst part is the toileting.

Mother rabbits don't buy organic baby wipes. They groom their young with their tongues to stimulate the nervous system into releasing urine and faeces. If the mother is gone, guess whose job it's to replicate the sensation of a giant rabbit tongue?

Yours, Tom. You have to take a warm, damp cotton cloth and gently rub their nether regions after every single microscopic meal just to keep their digestive tract moving. It's a profoundly humbling experience that makes changing a toddler's blowout nappy in the back of a Vauxhall Astra feel like a holiday at the Ritz. You will sit there, covered in goat's milk, massaging a wild animal's groin, wondering how you got a 2:1 in History and ended up here.

Stick to wooden animals

Instead of bringing fragile wildlife into a house currently governed by two chaotic toddlers, we need to stick to inanimate objects that can't die of fright.

That Rainbow Wooden Play Gym we got them when they were newborns? That was the peak of sensible animal interaction. It just sat there, being aesthetically pleasing and structurally sound, dangling a wooden elephant that couldn't suffer a stress-induced heart attack when Florence screeched at it. The natural wood didn't require me to stimulate its bowels with a warm flannel, and it survived all the heavy-handed batting the girls could throw at it. (They've long outgrown it now, obviously, but it remains one of the few things in this house that didn't raise my blood pressure).

If you're currently trying to survive the chaotic early years while maintaining some semblance of an eco-friendly, aesthetically tolerable household, you might want to browse Kianao's organic nursery collection before doing anything drastic like adopting a small mammal.

So, Tom of six months ago. Put the biscuit down. Gently lay some grass back over the disturbed nest in a crisscross pattern so you can tell if the mother returns later. Scoop up the twins, ignore their thrashing protests about abandoning the "babies," and go back inside the house. Lock the back door. Pour a very large coffee.

The mother is probably watching you from under the rhododendron bush right now, judging your parenting. Let her do her job, so you can spectacularly fail at yours in peace.

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Questions you're probably furiously googling right now

How do I know if a nest in the grass is actually abandoned?
Unless the nest is completely destroyed or the babies are visibly injured and freezing cold, it’s probably fine. You can place a few twigs or pieces of string in a tic-tac-toe pattern over the grass covering. Check back in 12 hours. If the pattern is disturbed, the mum has been back for her twilight feeding shift. Our vet swore by this trick, and it saved me from kidnapping four perfectly healthy animals.

Is it safe for my toddler to hold a pet rabbit?
Honestly, it's a terrible idea. Toddlers lack fine motor control and impulse regulation. Rabbits are prey animals with paper-thin bones who will kick out violently if they feel trapped. You're basically handing a loaded spring to a tiny, unpredictable drunk person. Stick to soft toys until they're at least seven or eight.

What kind of milk do you give an orphaned kit?
Never cow's milk. Ever. If you're genuinely acting on emergency veterinary advice, it’s usually a specific blend of goat’s milk and KMR (Kitten Milk Replacer). But really, you should be putting them in a dark, quiet box on half a heating pad on the lowest setting and driving them to a licensed wildlife rehabilitator immediately.

Why can't I feed them cradled on their backs?
Because their anatomy isn't designed for it. When we tilt them backward like a human infant taking a bottle, the liquid goes straight down the wrong pipe into their lungs. They have to sit upright, with their little paws on the ground or against your hand, like they would if they were nursing from their mother.

When do wild kits leave the nest for good?
Incredibly early. By the time they're about three to four weeks old and roughly the size of a fuzzy tennis ball, they're fully weaned and ready to face the world. If you see one hopping around your garden that size, it isn't lost. It's just moved out of its mother's house and is looking for its first flat.