Baby Mammals in the Grass
The Michigan Tech Campus is fairly attractive to wildlife these days. Like these baby bunnies that I saw near the library on July 30, 2023. These were obviously a litter, they were about the size of my hand, which is about half the size of the adult Cottontail_rabbits that I normally see around here. I expect that they came out of a nest in the bushes behind them. I see various sizes of rabbits about the place, it is clearly a well-established population.
Speaking of baby mammals, last summer (July-August 2024) we fostered a mother cat and her nearly newborn kittens from the local animal shelter. We took them in when the kittens were probably less than a week old. The mother was a calico cat,
which means that she had the genetics for all of the major colors of kittens. Which is what we got! There were four kittens, all various colored.
Here they are a few weeks later, posed with some flowers out on the lawn. There was an orange tabby;
a gray tabby;
a mostly-black tuxedo;
and a moustache tuxedo.
Of course, we already have two cats who were Not Keen On These Intruders, so there was no question of keeping the kittens or their mom long-term. But what we did do, is make sure the kittens were well-socialized. We not only played with them ourselves, but invited friends over to play with them as well. And by the time they were ready to be adopted to permanent homes, they were all the kinds of cats that would come running to be petted and jump up on laps without prompting. So, they all ended up adopted in short order, and they should be fine now.