Dag Nabbit
Friday, May 18, 2012
When we moved into our house last August, it wasn't long before we noticed that we had a little furry friend that liked to frequent our "park-like" (as described by the seller's agent) backyard. It wasn't Tessa, of course; it was a cute little fuzzy bunny.
We spotted him (her? who knows) every once in a while, hopping along through our grass, near our bushes, under our trees. We saw him less during the winter months, but as the weather grew warmer again, the sightings increased. Then, within the last few days, it started to seem like this bunny was everywhere.
You know that saying, "multiply like rabbits"? Yeah, well... you know what's coming next, don't you?
There are multiple bunnies.
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| They look a lot like this guy (Credit: Wikipedia) |
I quickly walked downstairs to alert Michael to the bunny baby boom, then went back upstairs to get my butt in the shower. It was getting late now.
But then I took one more look out the window and OH MY GOD THERE WERE FOUR BUNNIES.
We have a bunny infestation, y'all.
I like them as much as I can like a wild furry creature. I mean, out of all types of infestations to have, I'm happy to have bunnies, of all things. But, uh... what do we do?
A few weeks back, we were talking to our next door neighbor and somehow got on the subject of the wild little rabbit we had seen many times before. He actually said to us, "You guys have to be careful about your deck. A few years back, the previous owners had a problem with a bunch of bunnies living under there." At the time, we were all, "Oh, really?" and kind of brushed it off.
Apparently, bunnies find our deck (and our yard) to be quite a cozy home.
Michael did some research this morning and it seems that there isn't really an easy way to get rid of them. Some solutions involve moth balls, or predator urine. Which begs the question: where the hell do you buy predator urine? Plus, Tessa would have a BALL rolling around in that. Yum.
We're leaning toward trying out my mom's tender heart trap and then driving the bunny wayyyyy down the road to the country and setting him/her free. And then repeating that step into infinity until we somehow capture them all.
Gahhh. Let the adventure begin.
Has anyone ever had their yard overtaken by rabbits? How did you handle it? Any advice?
(Also, did you know that "dag nabbit" derives from "dang rabbit" from the old Bugs Bunny cartoons? You learn something new every day.)
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7 comments:
We have always had lots of rabbits and we have never really had any problem. Actually, we are quite entertained watching them. The only thing that has ever been a slight problem was they would eat some tomatoes that we planted sometimes, but we didn't really do anything to keep anything out.
We had rabbits at our old house and definitely now that we live in the country. We never did anything about them. At our old house there were some living under the front porch and they never bothered anything. One of our dogs liked to chase them, but they were good at hiding :). I kind of liked having them around. They never damaged anything.
Want to borrow my schnauzer for the weekend? :) But seriously, terriers are bred for chasing rodents away...
We had rabbits at out last house. They didn't bother anything except for the few times one of my dogs caught & killed one & I'd have to dispose of it. We did put rodent fencing around the bottom of the back deck. That was mostly to keep the dogs from digging under there going after who knows what. Other than that, we found the rabbits mostly preferred dog-free back yards
Local animal shelter? Pest control? Your neighbor is right about rabbits liking decks--that happened when my parents bought their new home. The rabbits went too far under the deck, got trapped, and died. We moved in during summer...and we never would have imagined that while unpacking that we'd also have to figure out where that wretched smell was coming from. And yes, I remember it clearly, more than 20 years later! I hope your family doesn't have to go through the same problem!
Not rabbits but my grandparents have a huge garden in their yard and have battled groundhogs there for at least 30 years. The issue for them is the groundhogs eat their veggies. They use a trap then set them free a far ways away but every year they come back.
We have a family of bunnies living under our shed. I have no good advice because our greyhound does her job at keeping them under the shed. Other than her chasing them all over the place, they don't harm anything or anyone. Unless they're disrupting gardens, you could probably just ignore them.
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