dead wild baby bunnies

Question
My fiancee and I just built a house and we have new mulch and bushes in the front. I noticed 4 days ago a big clump of fur under of the bushes. I was curious as to what it was. I took a long piece of mulch and poked it around, discovering it was a lot of fur covering a deep nest with 3 baby bunnies inside with their eyes closed. I never touched the bunnies and I put the fur back how it was. The next day I noticed the fur was packed down more and arranged differently than what I had left it, indicating to me the mother had been there the night before. Two days later when I came back to the house I found 2 of the babies laying next to each other outside of the nest on the mulch. I discovered they were stiff but did not seem to have any markings on them such as an animal attack. The third bunny was still in the nest and appeared stiff as well. I buried the 2 bunnies that were laying on the mulch but left the one in the nest since he was at a weird angle and would have been too difficult to dig up from the deep nest. I packed him back in the nest with the remaining fur and mulch. I went out to my car at midnight and noticed the nest was disturbed. The hair and mulch was scattered and the baby bunny from the nest was missing! What in the world happened? Could the mother have done this? Is it possible that another animal dug the baby up? Why were the first 2 bunnies out of their nest? I was just so upset about the baby bunnies, I wondered if it was my fault. I've noticed other spots in the mulch where an animal, perhaps the rabbit, has been laying. I'll make sure to leave any future babies alone!

Answer
Dear Bethanie,

It sounds as if a predator found the nest and killed the babies, which they can do without doing much external damage.  Rabbits generally do not move their babies, so I don't think the mama had anything to do with this.  

It's also not likely that your disturbing the nest caused them to die, unless you had perfume or lotion on your hands that might have disturbed the mother enough to abandon the babies.

Without knowing more about their history, I can't guess why the babies were outside the nest.  It's possible mom abandoned them and they crawled out to find her (for food) and then died of exposure and/or dehydration.  But it's really not possible to know without much more information.

I am sorry about the babies.

Dana