Herding rabbits

Photo of a different rabbit
of the warren, taken Tuesday

I woke up early yesterday morning and couldn't go back to sleep. An image haunted me of the little rabbit we had shooed from the back yard the previous afternoon. I felt tired.
    We had been sure that we had at least two rabbits living in the back yard, maybe three. I thought I'd seen rabbits of three different sizes this week.
    My wife and I agreed that the next time we saw them in the planting bed along the back fence (shown in the photographs), we'd try to herd them toward the back gate.
    My plan was that I'd take a section of the same fine-meshed cage wire I'd stapled to the bottom two feet of the wooden fence and use landscape staples to secure it to the ground to form a chute. Then I'd open the back gate a foot and secure the end of the wire to the post. All my wife would have to do while I herded a rabbit toward the gate (or both—or more—rabbits, if we were lucky) was to stand about ten feet out from the end of the chute to try to keep the rabbits from crossing the lawn toward their apparent sanctuary under the garden shed.
    About a quarter to four, my wife reported seeing two rabbits in the back planting area.
    I set up the chute and opened the gate.
    "What a pipe dream," she scoffed.
    "Just stand there," I commanded. "We'll see."
    In short order I shooed the littlest rabbit I thought I'd seen along the fence and out the gate. When it tried to come back, I ran it along the outside of the fence and around the corner toward the front. There are no lots behind our house—just a drainage pond—and a grassy easement along the side where the rabbit went.
    A little later, from near the fence along the easement, my wife said, "Hey, he's trying to get back in."
    "Of course," I said, "he wants to be with his family."
    "This has been his home," she said.
    "Yes," I said.
    But I remembered the reason we had decided to drive the rabbits out. They were eating my wife's flowers and shrubs. "Their own private produce market," she had remarked.
    We set up again for me to try now to herd the larger rabbit out. It "must" still be along the back fence somwhere.
    Indeed, my wife sighted a larger rabbit almost immediately.
    "Step back from the planting area," I shouted. "Don't—"
    But the rabbit was already scurrying along the fence away from the gate.
    "You need a stick to beat the bushes," my wife said.
    I took out my gloves and used them, going along the back planting area two or three times, but never sighting the larger rabbit. Finally, we stopped for the time. Maybe we'd see rabbits again later.
    But none showed up.

Except in my dreams.
    And in my wife's too? At breakfast she said, "I hope that little rabbit found a way to get back in the yard."
    In the afternoon, after a long day of chores in Durham and Chapel Hill, we saw a little rabbit under the new magnolia tree near the back fence.
    "You think the little rabbit got back in?" I said.
    "I hope so," she said.
    "I'm too tired to herd rabbits," I said.
    "Yes, let's not," she said.

This rabbit actually looks larger than either rabbit we tried to herd—
the little rabbit's grandparent (and possibly parent as well)?