On a lovely spring evening in 2015, I arrived home from work and parked on the busy West Los Angeles street outside the house I shared with my fiancée. As I exited the car, a highly unusual sight caught my eye: a small rabbit hopping alongside the curb. Mostly white with brown markings and spiky tufts of hair around its face, this rabbit couldn’t be wild. Someone lost their pet bunny! I quickly called my fiancée, who came outside with a cardboard box. To our immense surprise, we easily scooped up the tiny wanderer.
I set out to find the owner of this missing bunny. I checked with neighbors. I scoured social media sites for lost rabbit posts. Nothing. Where did she come from? At the time, I didn’t make the connection that Easter had occurred three weeks earlier.
By the next day, I was completely smitten and convinced this adorable creature was meant to be with us. We named her Charlotte, a newsworthy name at the time because of the birth of the granddaughter of Princess Diana.
So began my obsession with rabbits. I volunteered with a rabbit rescue and learned that Charlotte, like so many bunnies at the rescue, was very likely an impulse Easter purchase. When the novelty of a live Easter bunny wore off, her owners released her into the traffic-ridden streets of Los Angeles.
In the summer of 2016 my wife and I moved to Memphis, and I wanted to get involved again with a rabbit rescue. To my great disappointment, the closest one was in Nashville. Finally in early 2021 my vet told me about New Beginnings Animal Rescue, a nonprofit, foster-based rescue for cats and dogs in the Mid-South, around since 2011, that recently expanded its rescue efforts to include rabbits.
Volunteering with NBAR has been incredibly rewarding as we seek to fulfill the need for rabbit rescue in Memphis and the Mid-South. Our goal is to find homes for rescued bunnies while educating the community about caring for them. We love rabbits and want you to love them too, but it’s important to understand the commitment and care they require.
Easter is coming up. Each year thousands of rabbits are purchased as Easter gifts for children and then quickly neglected, set “free,” or worse. Why? Rabbits are greatly misunderstood as pets, and many breeders sell bunnies without informing buyers about the needs of a house rabbit. These unique creatures have individual personalities and generally live 8 to 12 years. The oldest rabbit I’ve known was just shy of 18 when he passed. That bunny was almost legal!
Other details about pet rabbits and their care may surprise you as well. The cages marketed for rabbits are entirely too small and inhumane for an adult bunny. Some rabbits grow to the size of a cat or small dog. Could you imagine putting your cat or dog in a small cage for its whole life? Of course not. Like their feline and canine friends, rabbits need space to run and play.
Drinking water from a bowl, not a bottle, is natural for rabbits. You’ve not really lived until you’ve heard the delicate slurps of a bunny drinking from a bowl. In terms of diet, rabbits are like tiny horses. Their primary source of food should be hay (not carrots!), and they enjoy pooping while grazing.
Speaking of poop, rabbits are easily trained to use a litter box unless they’re not spayed or neutered. “Fixing” your rabbit also helps prevent unwanted behaviors such as mounting, urine spraying and other territorial marking (pooping everywhere), and aggression. Females can produce a litter every 28 days, so spaying and neutering is paramount in preventing unwanted litters.
Bunnies that aren’t littermates must go through a bonding process before living together. Nonbonded rabbits will fight and could seriously hurt each other. Bunnies can also injure you if not picked up properly and handled with care. As prey animals, their first instinct when lifted is to kick with their powerful back legs to free themselves.
For rabbit rescues, the weeks after Easter are stressful and heartbreaking. Many stray bunnies are badly injured, require expensive vet care, or don’t even survive their injuries. As the only rabbit rescue in the Mid-South, we’re sometimes forced to turn away requests for help due to lack of funds, fosters, or resources.
This April if you want an “Easter bunny,” a furry toy or chocolate rabbit is an excellent choice. If you’re serious about a pet rabbit, contact us about adopting. Or consider fostering to experience life with a rabbit without the long commitment. We’re here for the rabbit community and want to provide education, guidance, and hoppy endings for everyone!
Although she’s a transplant, B. Wells is a proud Memphian who’s here to stay. When she’s not rescuing rabbits, you’ll find her roller-skating on the Greenline, hanging out in the upstairs back room at E&H, or swing-dancing at Hernando’s Hide-A-Way.
Konstanttin | Dreamstime.com