EASTER BUNNIES

Baby bunny rabbits. Cute. Soft. Furry. They seem the perfect Easter present. But are they? As the Easter season approaches, bunny rabbits become a hot commodity. Tiny bunnies in pet store windows lure parents and children alike into an often impulsive decision to fill that Easter basket with a real live Easter Rabbit.

Rabbits are high maintenance pets. They require daily care that is often too much for a child to handle alone. If parents take an active role in feeding and cleaning and loving the new addition, a bunny can be a wonderful addition to a home and can teach children priceless lessons about responsibility and unconditional love. But how often does that really happen? Instead, the parents see the rabbit as an opportunity for their child to learn responsibility. They wash their hands of the whole thing and turn things over to a child, much as they would a doll or a stuffed teddy bear.

A month or two pass, maybe even less, and that bunny’s cute furry face loses its appeal. Children, tired of changing the litterbox, tired of daily feeding, begin to neglect this living creature and wish instead for a stuffed toy with no needs at all. Parents sometimes fill the void and attend to the bunny’s most basic needs, often not out of genuine love, but out of guilt or worse yet, resentment. Soon, the bunny grows ill from lack of proper care, and requires medical attention. The cute stuffed bunny suddenly isn’t so cute anymore.

Weighing the prospective vet bill against the perceived value of a now unwanted bunny, many people ignore the symptoms of illness or hope they will go away on their own. Bunnies are delicate creatures. It doesn’t take much and soon the bunny is gone.

If the bunny doesn’t die, the parents soon tire of the work involved in maintaining its life. One weekend, deciding a dog or a cat might make a better pet, they take the bunny to the local shelter and leave him there thinking it will be easy for him to find a new home. Not so. Too often, shelters are not equipped to handle rabbits and fail to give them the proper care. Mixed in a room filled with barking dogs and mewing cats, the stress grows too great for a bunny’s sensitive nerves and they often fall ill. An ill animal is not adoptable, so too often these gentle creatures are euthanized and never given another chance at love.

A lack of proper planning and education leads to thousands of domestic rabbits dying through neglect or being dumped on shelters a result of the Easter rush. Come summertime, these bunnies find themselves facing death as the shelters run out of space and humane organizations, so overloaded by the onslaught, find they have to turn bunnies away.

As you pass the pet store window this Easter, think a kind thought for the bunny in the window. Wish him safe travels. Then stop by the toy store and buy your child the kind of Easter bunny that can’t be hurt, can’t be neglected, can’t die.