Missing Bunnies - Alien Abduction?

Bunny in a Lawn Circle

We are wrapping up our one month of living in a rented condominium while waiting for our new home in Fort Collins to close.(1) After returning home the week-before-last from a meeting in Couer d'alene, Idaho, we were not greeted by the half dozen or so cotton tail rabbits that normally inhabit our front lawn - little mowers they are. Ever since we moved in, the young rabbits and adults stay put, holding still as we drive up and park our car at the curb in front of the apartment - not moving, no sign of their actions before we arrived - the tell-tale rings of short cropped grass that surrounds their seating/eating place. If they were larger, and the greenery surrounding them were corn, you wouldn't have to squint your eyes very much to see the sure signs of possible visitors from space - crop circles and the likelihood of aliens. But regardless of the scale of the landscape alterations, the absence of the furry beasts was a sure indication that something was amiss - lawn circles without bunnies to be seen. Where could the little bunnies have gone?

Earlier theories of rabbits gone missing abound. One of the most popular that came to mind was the  tale of Little Bunny Foo Foo - a children's poem that featured a popular but wicked sort central character whose action ultimately resulted in a transformation performed by a Fairy - an example of a bunny gone missing (2):

Little bunny Foo Foo

Went hopping through the forest

Scooping up the field mice

And bashing them on the head

Down came the Good Fairy, and she said

"Little bunny Foo Foo

I don't want to see you

Scooping up the field mice

And bashing them on the head."

I'll give you 3 chances,

And if you don't behave, I will turn you into a goon!"

And the next day...

Little bunny Foo Foo

Went hopping through the forest

Scooping up the field mice

And bashing them on the head

Down came the Good Fairy, and she said

"Little bunny Foo Foo

I don't want to see you

Scooping up the field mice

And bashing them on the head."

I'll give you 2 more chances,

And if you don't behave, I will turn you into a goon!"

And the next day...

Little bunny Foo Foo

Went hopping through the forest

Scooping up the field mice

And bashing them on the head

Down came the Good Fairy, and she said

"Little bunny Foo Foo

I don't want to see you

Scooping up the field mice

And bashing them on the head."

I'll give you 1 more chance,

And if you don't behave, I will turn you into a goon!"

And the next day...

Little bunny Foo Foo

Went hopping through the forest

Scooping up the field mice

And bashing them on the head

Down came the Good Fairy, and she said

"Little bunny Foo Foo

I don't wanna to see you

Scooping up the field mice

And bashing them on the head."

I gave you three chances and you didn't behave so.... POOF. She turned him into a Goon.

Justice played out in a children's poem. 

In reality, a more sinister plot seemed to have emerged as we unlocked the door and entered our living room - the smell of death was heavy in the air. It seemed an action worse than abduction - more like a bunny had met an ill end, and the action may have taken place in our apartment. We have always enjoyed the Agatha Christie Poirot mysteries on television, but this seemed more in the vein of an dastardly murder in an NCIS episode.

Critter extractor

Other than the smell, there was no indication of foul play in our apartment. We opened all the windows and slept the best we could before leaving the next morning for another business trip. After a couple of text mail exchanges with our landlord - he replied, we will have to take care of this the right way this time - we were assured that the problem would be taken care of as soon as possible. In the end, the landlord summoned a pest exterminator, and after the young technician accessed the crawl space in our closet, emerged with a plastic bag full of dead bunnies.

"Thirty-eight of them," he murmured through his filter mask as he quickly went out our door.
"Did he say 38?" Jan and I said at the same time.
I went outside and asked, "Did you day 38?'
"Yes." as he looked back and then turned and talked with the landlord.
I went back inside and said, "He said 38."

We talked a little more, but I think our lips were curled up at the thought of a mass graveyard of accumulated disappeared bunnies underneath our feet, kitchen, bedroom,.... where we lived.

As it turned out, there was no alien abductors, no justice-wielding fairies - just a one-way foundation skirt that allowed little bunnies to pass into the dark space under our apartment, never to see the full sunlight or green grass with fewer mowed lawn circles under moon-lit night skies where imagined space craft pass through the night.

______________________
(1) We have learned that in Colorado, there are two simultaneous closings: the Title and the real estate loan.
(2) Through a little bit more background research, I found out that even the Grateful Dead were aware of this children's tune, and used it in concert.