Karen Wils photo An eastern cottontail rabbits rests, waiting for nightfall.

ESCANABA — A gray shadow dashes past the apple tree.

He spies on the house and the bird feeder from beneath the lilac bush.

As darkness falls, he sneaks ever closer, leaving his telltale signs in the snow.

The bush bunny is at home in almost every ones backyard. The eastern cottontail rabbit has become the “town bunny” of the U.P. Chances are, you have rabbit tracks across your snowswept garden right now. The chew marks on your apple trees and the little round pellet droppings in the snow are sure signs that the bush bunnies are thriving there.

As winter wears on it becomes more and more difficult for the cottontails to survive. The search for food gets hard as the snow gets deeper. The cottontail with its little feet cannot travel well in fluffy snow drifts.

The cute, brown, bush bunny makes trails and runways from yard to yard looking for handouts, bird seed or hay to feed on.

In the summertime, when the whole world is green, the cottontail rabbit has an easy time, but northern winters are hard on him.

Bush bunnies are true rabbits and do not turn white in the winter like their cousins the snowshoe hares do. So with their brown coats on a snowy white background, they’re easy prey for many predators.

The shoreline of the Escanaba area has a good population of cottontails. It would amaze most people to know how many times coyotes and even wolves stray off the ice and into town to make a quick meal of several cotton tail rabbits.

Besides the wild canines, owls, hawks and cats will take their share of cottontails.

It’s hard to imagine that fifty years or more ago, the cottontail rabbit was a pretty rare bunny around Escanaba. Their home range was always the southern parts of Michigan and Wisconsin. Bush bunnies were only found in open fields around human development. The varying hare or “snowshoe hare,” as we call it, was the main rabbit around here.

Over the years the eastern cottontail has expanded its range across the U.P. Urban sprawl, cleared forest lands and human development have created a lot of grassy areas where cottontails can survive. Milder winters and less snowfall has been another plus to keep the bush bunnies thriving.

The snowshoe hare, on the other hand, has lost a lot of ground over the past few decades. Climate change will be rough on this animal that needs cool summers, snowy winters and wild wooded areas to survive.

We are fortunate in Delta County to have both the bush bunny and the woodsy, white hare as our neighbors.

The hares are about to start their “crazy as a March hare” behavior. The mating season is just around the corner.

The cute, little bush bunnies hide in the hedges. A nose wiggles and an ear twitches. Soon spring will be in the air!

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Karen (Rose) Wils is a lifelong north Escanaba resident. Her folksy columns appear weekly in Lifestyles.