Easter is NOT the time to buy a rabbit!

Easter is coming and pet stores are chockful of sweet, cuddly little bunnies.

Impulse buys, rabbits by the thousands are dumped with weeks of Easter Sunday as the realities of pet care sinks in and the novelty of having an "easter bunny" dissipates. 

I have a memory which haunts me.

Many years ago, when I was first house-hunting I went into one house where an older couple were looking to sell - downsizing. In their spotless basement was a wire cage - wire floor, nothing else - a water bottle, the little white rabbit sat there, alone in the basement, by himself, his feet being punished by the wire cage bottom.  Spotlessly clean... and all I could think was he sat there, hour after hour, day after day, week after week, the only interaction when they changed his water or fed him. no affection, no company, no love, no exercise.  I didn't even have a lot of knoweldge about rabbits then but all these years later, that little rabbit haunts me ..... in hindsight, I wish desperately I had done something - offered to take him, found him a home.  But caught up in my own life with 4 small kids, 3 cats, a needy dog and a fulltme job I didn't.  I suffer for that now, thinking of that sad little rabbit.
A Toronto Star article this morning aptly describes how the thoughtless actions of silly people bring anguish, abandonment and often death to thousands of little rabbits every year.

“Easter sucks to be a rabbit,” says Lush, whose Milton-based charity places bunnies with volunteer foster families until permanent homes are found. There are 50 rabbits in foster families at any given time.

Rabbit Rescue has some excellent advice on rabbits - and details clearly the time, care and work that goes into caring for a rabbit. Rabbits make terrific pets - but you have to be cognizant of what is involved.

Some facts about bunnies:

• lifespans can be 10 years or longer
• require regular exericse - will suffer if left to languish in a cage
• require regular interaction - they are social, affectionate and curious
• "bunny-proofing" is a MUST - rabbits chew and electrical wires and other hazards must be avoided
• spaying or neutering is HIGHLY recommended as they reach maturity
• they do NOT make good pets for small children - small children want to pick them up and cuddle them and this will frighten and make the rabbit kick or nip to get away and OFTEN results in severe injury

The House Rabbit Society has an excellent overview of what pet rabbits require - and are blunt that rabbits require almost as much effort and work as a dog.
So PLEASE think twice and then again before buying a bunny for that one moment on Easter Sunday ... and give your child a stuffed rabbit or a chocolate one instead.

Easter Bunny

by Mary Brandolino

In memory of all the bunnies we couldn't save.

I remember Easter Sunday

It was colorful and fun

The new life that I'd begun

In my new cage.

I was just a little thing

When they brought me from the store

And they put me on the floor

In my cage.

They would take me out to play

Love and pet me all the time

Then at day's end I would climb

In my cage.

But as days and weeks went by

I saw less of them it seemed

Of their loving touch I dreamed

In my cage.

In the night outside their house

I felt sad and so neglected

Often scared and unprotected

In my cage.

In the dry or rainy weather

Sometimes hotter sometimes colder

I just sat there growing older

In my cage.

The cat and dog raced by me

Playing with each other only

While I sat there feeling lonely

In my cage.

Upon the fresh green grass

Children skipped and laughed all day

I could only watch them play

From my cage.

They used to take me out

And let me scamper in the sun

I no longer get to run

In my cage.

Once a cute and cuddly bunny

Like a little ball of cotton

Now I'm grown up and forgotten

In my cage.

I don't know what went wrong

At the home I did inhabit

I just grew to be a rabbit

In my cage.

But they've brought me to the pound

I was once loved and enjoyed

Now I wait to be destroyed

In my cage.