Capture

The rabbit has been relocated across the highway and 12 miles south (I don't want him finding his way back here) to an open meadow area with lots of cover and plenty of dried grass and forbs. He'll be happy there. Rabbits like forbs.

Thanksgiving evening, after dishes were done and leftovers put away, I spotted the rabbit in the back yard. He had gotten bolder, spending more and more time in our back yard, wriggling under our gate to get in and nosh on my garden plants in back. 

This time I enlisted Jim and between his stalking and my positioning the Havahart trap at exactly the spot where the rabbit scoots under the gate, we got him. Jim used the air rifle (it only pops noisily, there is no ammunition) and flushed the rabbit from under the deck. The rabbit bounded for the gate, I chased him this way and that until he was forced under the gate and right into the trap. It snapped shut and we had him.

We put a blanket over the cage to calm him and then put him in the back of the car for a drive to his new home. The sun had just gone down and a classic Santa Fe sunset blazed over the black outlines of mountains as we drove out into the basin. Magenta, gold and crimson lit up the horizon and lasted for almost an hour. It was glorious.

The whole thing was awesome. The careful stalking, my hero the hunter with his fearsome air rifle, the excited flush of prey, the strategic capture, the satisfying snap of the trap. The swift disappearance into the weeds on release. The scarlet sunset raging around us during all of it. 

A safari hunt on the African savannah at sunset could not have been more cinematic than this flush and trap affair. It was epic.