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Rabbits

My experience with rabbits has been varied. As a child, I believed in the Easter Rabbit. I really believed that he brought my youngest sister, Mildred, as she was born on Easter Sunday. The Easter Rabbit also brought our Easter eggs, and colored our chicken eggs.

After we lived in town, that Easter rabbit had turned into a regular ogre! For years, there were rabbits everywhere, -in the garden, in the flower beds, and in the flower boxes, around which I even had to put fences to keep them out.

Some years ago, I had a neighbor who helped me get rid of my rabbit problem for a short time. They had a new baby, and it was his job to take care of the 4:00 o'clock feeding. Since it was early in the morning, and was just getting light, he could see the rabbits as they romped and played and ate. Having had his problems with them too, and hearing me complain, he took matters into his own hands. He would shoot them with his air gun. It is illegal to fire a gun in the city, but I understand that an air gun makes very little noise, and being early in the morning, he got by with it. When he told me about all the rabbits he killed, I said I didn't mind, as long as he picked up and disposed of the dead rabbits. I did not want to run into one while weeding a flower bed. This took care of my rabbit problem that summer until the baby didn't need to be fed at 4:00 o'clock anymore.

I also found out that feeding the birds draws rabbits to the feeder as well. So since my sister Ruth, who lives next door to me, is an avid bird feeder, (which I am not,) I put a big sign on my bird feeder with an arrow pointing to hers that says GO TO RUTH'S. So I do not feed birds anymore! (As you might guess, I did not really do this, but the principle is the same, because if the birds have any sense at all, they will go there to eat if they see my feeder is empty.)

My brother-in-law, Reuben, who lives in the country, feeds the birds, but he has a way to take care of the rabbits too. He sets out live traps in winter, catches and butchers them and puts them in his freezer. He says they make for good eating! But even with the traps, we counted five rabbits at dusk, under and around his bird feeders in January of 1996. In fact, when the snow was so deep, one rabbit had climbed on the deck railing and was actually in the bird feeder. So he deserved to be trapped and butchered. HE WAS A DUMB BUNNY!!