Wasn’t it just a few weeks ago that I was mourning the lack of rabbits in my area? These last few days, I’ve seen them everywhere.

I walked out of my apartment building early Tuesday morning, and spotted two palm-sized, fuzzy baby bunnies wandering the lawn by the stream. Wednesday, I flushed three more tiny rabbits from the garden at work. Thursday evening, after the storms ended, I drove past another couple of small brown bunnies hopping through a grassy field. And then, while walking in the park later that evening, I saw at least half-a-dozen rabbits running in and out of the tall grasses lining the paths.

And the important thing about all these sightings is that all of these rabbits were small. They ranged from the baby variety measuring maybe four-to-six inches long to the juvenile eight-to-ten inch size. None of them, though, appeared to be adults.

Logically, of course, there have to be adults around. I mean, where else would baby bunnies come from? But the adults — are in hiding.

Maybe they’ve become ultra-paranoid about being hunted, given the jump in the number of hawks and foxes around, and are wisely keeping out of sight of the predators. Or perhaps their little brains (and the brain of a rabbit is very tiny, according to my friends who have pet bunnies) have finally assimilated the fact that in rabbit versus car competitions, the car always wins, and so the adult rabbits now avoid the roadways.

Whatever the reason, I’m not seeing any adult rabbits, but I now have pretty concrete evidence that they’re still in the area. I hope that the plethora of babies I’m seeing means that the population is beginning to grow again. Rabbits are such an integral part of my concept of a healthy world; not seeing them had me worried that our local forests were going to be devoid of animals. Not that that would occur — we’ve got enough white-tailed deer here to stock a good-sized farm — but no matter how graceful they are, deer just can’t replace bunnies in my heart.

And of course, the bunnies are just So. Darned. Cute!