Yesterday we were faced with a very strange mystery. We woke up to find(most of) the bodies of four baby bunnies on our back porch. Two of these baby rabbit bodies were missing their entire top halves. Head, front paws, just gone. I have chosen to omit the photos of the rabbits that are not whole, due to their gory and depressing nature.
It was weird though, because the blood you can see in that picture above is the only blood that was on our porch. This would give you the idea that whatever killed the bunnies did not do it on our back porch.
On that note: what DID kill these baby rabbits? Why would it leave them there? and Why would it only eat the heads?
Our guess right now is that it was an owl. That night around midnight, Dad was walking through the kitchen, and heard what he thought was a really loud morning dove with a deep voice. Upon googling, we found that this is pretty much what the call of a great horned owl sounded like. I'm still not sure why an owl would leave its food on our porch though. It wasn't like it just dropped it. They were scattered pretty far apart, and one of the halves was under a chair close the the back door. The owl would have had to land.
As for why it would only eat the heads, I have found two plausible explanations. Apparently the brain of a rabbit is one of the few places it's body where there is fat. So the owl could have needed the fat from the brains and so only ate the heads. The other explanations is that the head offers less chance of parasites than the lower part of the body with the stomach and intestines(where parisites like to lurk.) But the rest is just speculation.
My uncle had a similar incident. He found a headless rabbit in his front yard. His was full grown, but missing its head and one front paw.
We took the little rabbit bodies to the end of the nature trail where there was a field and dumped them there, since that was probably where they came from anyways.
And to make you feel better...here's a picture of a live bunny.
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