Down the rabbit hole...

... and I'm hoping against hope that it's only a rabbit.

My husband found a gaping hole near the front steps yesterday...... actually the same hole that I had found behind the bushes and near the stepping stones around the steps. I was filling up that hole day after day a few months ago, using the dirt that had been 'shoveled' out of it and piled up under the palm trees.

I thought it was an armadillo or a skunk, or even a rabbit or a fox, but we never did see the animal who was making his home underneath the front steps.  Yesterday, when my husband put the ladder up near the steps so he could get to the roof gutters, the ladder sunk right into one of those stones because there wasn't any dirt at all underneath.

My husband put on work gloves and was able to reach underneath the stones, all the way up to his elbow.... which shows you just how much dirt had been removed from underneath that stoned path. We had a bag of topsoil in the garage, so my husband shoveled that into the hole and then replaced the stone on top of the new dirt. Then he covered up the entrance hole with wire..... and now we're watching that spot to see what, if anything, comes in or out of 'the rabbit hole.'

Whatever animal is in there, it's not going to come out during the day, and I'm certainly not going to be sitting on the porch with a flashlight just to have a look-see. Suffice it to say that something has made a cozy nest underneath those steps and if it's still in there during all of the hot days we've had these past few months, then far be it from me to disturb it.

One thing I've learned about the animals out here....... the only way to win the wildlife war is to shoot everything in sight, on sight. And I'm not about to do that, so my motto has come to be "Live and let live, and just stay out of their way."