Easter is just around the corner and it’s all about chicks and bunnies.
Luckily, most people don’t want, or can’t have chicks as pets. The same cannot be said for bunnies.
Every year people purchase pet bunnies for Easter, only to discover three months later they don’t actually want them.
Some end up in shelters, but far too many are thrown out by people who decide to set them free, believing that domesticated rabbits will not only survive in the wild, but also love it.
Of course most of the bunnies that are set free are not spayed or neutered, and we all know the phrase ‘breed like rabbits.’
Let’s start with the fact that no animal should ever be bought, or given, as a gift. They are not things. They are living, feeling beings that need a commitment from you to be fed, cared for, and loved for life.
They are not a toy that can be discarded once your child is done playing with it, or when you lose interest in it.
Be prepared to care for that bunny for the next 10 years or so. Caring does not mean sticking it in a cage and forgetting about it. Like dogs and cats, rabbits are very loving, social creatures that require interaction with their family.
Despite the warnings, you decide to get that bunny. It’s small and cute and you love it. Things change, as they often do, and you decide the rabbit has to go. The shelters are overrun with bunnies, so you decide to set it free. It’s a bunny, it will be fine.
It doesn’t take long for a couple of bunnies to become hundreds, and then they go from being cute to being pests.
In B.C., bunnies have been culled numerous times because of the huge numbers of feral rabbits. The majority of feral rabbits can be traced back to pet bunnies.
You might be aware of the situation in Victoria, where hundreds of rabbits, descendants of pet bunnies that were dumped by thoughtless humans, have overrun certain areas of the city.
They have culled the population over the years, but the bunnies always reappear.
Currently, on Vancouver Island, there is an outbreak of a rare disease (Rabbit Viral Hemorrhagic Disease) that is killing the bunnies.
I’d like to believe that those who have dumped their bunnies are horrified by their fate, and will never do such a thing again.
This year, buy a chocolate bunny for Easter.
Magdalena Romanow
is a volunteer at Katie’s Place, an animal shelter
in Maple Ridge.