Rabbits on the Run



The talk around these parts is of rabbits. At this time of year they are wrecking havoc in the gardens, the young ones especially. As one monk put it, they are eating the flowers before they have a chance to grow, let alone blossom. One solution is to flush them out by a whole team of us trawling through the larger garden in a row, sending them towards the garden gate. The gardens are fortified but there are always the adventurous few who find their way in. It only takes one or two baby rabbits to get inside the fences to make for sad and frustrated gardeners.

The garden across the yard from where I work has been the site of much cunning, both on the part of rabbits and the garden caretaker. This morning the second of the three inside the garden was caught, by hand! Two down and one to go. We do use live traps as well as basic stealth by the way. The fencing within the garden is only temporary it being used to flush out the bunnies into open lawn and when there the determined caretaker hurdles the back wall and chases the culprit(s) out of the open gate.

Last evening, just at the crucial moment, one of the cats just happened to wandered through the open gate subverting the current operation. No amount of sweet talking would turn that cat around.

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3 thoughts on “Rabbits on the Run”

  1. Our neighbourhood is a real rabbit haven. But on a trip to the John Janzen nature centre with my 5-year-old’s kindergarten class, we discovered that our rabbits aren’t really rabbits. They’re hares. Because they change colour with the seasons. That’s what makes a rabbit a hare, apparently. Or a hare apparent.

    Indelible image from a few winter’s ago. One of the kids had a croupy cough keeping him awake all night, so I took him outside for a walk in the cold air to help his air passages. It was sometime after midnight. We went out and there in the middle of the street was a gathering of white rabbits. Six or seven. As we approached they moved further down the street, but stayed together in a group. Each time we approached they moved their meeting spot further away. All the way around the block.

    Wonder what they were conferring about….

  2. Tom, that night time hare story is really scary! Thanks.

    The first time I saw those ‘white rabbits’ in Edmonton I half expected Alice to come out from behind a house or a rabbit to put on a top hat and tails (tales?)…. or something.

  3. I love that story about the white rabbits’ gathering. I love hares, they are very special.I have sometimes seen them in the distance on the moor tops here in the Yorkshire Dales.
    There are lots of rabbits on my allotment. I have switched to growing things they don’t eat, fruit especially but broad beans work too. It’s easier than getting upset when they nibble the new shoots off crops. There are websites telling you what they don’t eat but the rabbits haven’t always read them & eat stuff anyway!

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