“Rabbits are not the simple, easy little pets the media and the public generally think they are,” Paula Watkins said. Watkins is a House Rabbit Society volunteer educator.
“I got into it the way a lot of people do: I got a rabbit for my son,” she said.
Decades later, the memory is fresh.
She set the scene: Drive son to pet store, son sees rabbits, begs mom to buy one.
“We had guinea pigs at the time,” Watson recalled. “The rabbit was about the same size . . . and I thought, ‘How hard can this be?’ I’ll just have the rabbit and the guinea pig live together. What’s one more?”
Mom and son brought the chosen bunny home and placed it into a cardboard box with the guinea pig.
“Immediately the rabbit hopped out of the box because they have strong, powerful hind legs. I thought: ‘OK, this isn’t going to work,’” Watkins said.
Her son and husband built an indoor house for the rabbit; then they fed the rabbit all the wrong food — human junk food and treats, instead of hay, what rabbits are supposed to eat.
“His teeth grew too long because he wasn’t eating hay and I didn’t realize that; and I didn’t take him to a vet; and it was too late by the time I did. He was too far gone to save,” Watkins confessed.
She had wrongly done everything a person could possibly do with a pet rabbit.
“I just felt terrible about this poor, innocent, little rabbit I had killed because of my ignorance,” she said.
Her vet put her in touch with the House Rabbit Society, but Watkins was too embarrassed to call right away.
Through the House Rabbit Society’s education program, she learned how to care for rabbits properly, how to house them, how to feed them; and she redeemed herself. That was many rabbits ago, in Columbus, Ohio, before she moved to Wilmington, N.C. When her grown children left home, fostering rabbits became her retirement thing.
“From then on, it was me who fell in love with the rabbits. We had a dog at the time and the new rabbit got along well with the dog. When we moved to Wilmington we had two rabbits. A bunny sitter who was into cat rescue was telling me about the rabbits in the shelters here that were euthanized because there was no one doing rabbit rescue in the area,” Watkins said.
Watkins started the House Rabbit Society’s Cape Fear chapter with one rabbit. For 10 years she fostered rabbits, adopting the ones that were sick. With the help of volunteers, she rescued unwanted bunnies and placed them in foster homes.
During the Great Easter Bunny Rescue of 2008, 20 unsold Easter rabbits were dumped along the railroad tracks near the intersection of Wrightsville Avenue and Dawson Street.
“After they did not sell as Easter pets, the rabbits were left to fend for themselves,” Watkins said. “We have no idea who did this horrible act, but captured most of them.”
Four were found dead, one wounded with scars the vet said looked as if they came from the jaws of a large predator. The rest were in fairly good shape, Watkins said. With the help of various rescue groups, the rabbits were collected, spayed or neutered and adopted.
Watkins has since retired from her retirement thing.
“I got out of it about two years ago because I ended up with a houseful of rabbits that were unadoptable. When that happens you’ve used up your space, a lot of times your volunteers … come and go. If they’re really good volunteers, they fall in love with the rabbit and decide to keep it, then they’re no good anymore because they’ve used up the space,” Watkins said.
She’s still a volunteer with the House Rabbit Society and part of a network of rabbit rescuers in eastern North Carolina, Triangle Rabbits in Raleigh and another group based in Greenville. “They have a couple different shelters they pull rabbits from,” Watkins said. “If there’s a rabbit in need in the Wilmington area, if there’s a stray running loose that somebody tells me about, we catch it and we work to get it spayed and neutered and into a foster home whenever we can.”
What to know before you adopt a rabbit this Easter
With Easter coming, what do people need to know before they adopt a rabbit as a gift?
Paula Watkins of the Cape Fear House Rabbit Society offers these tips about Easter bunnies.
A rabbit is a 10-year commitment.
“They live 10 years if they’re fed and housed properly. A child’s attention span is about 10 minutes. When a child wants a rabbit, it will be the parent’s rabbit.“
“I don’t adopt rabbits to the children, I adopt them to the parents,” Watkins said.
House rabbits are prey to predators, just like their backyard cousins.
“Everything is out to eat them,” she said. “They have that prey animal mentality. They’re different from dogs and cats in that aspect and even though they are more domesticated than the wild rabbits in the yard … they’re not ideal pets for small children. Starting about age six or seven, they’re OK pets for children, as long as the parents are engaged and are willing to be the primary caretaker.”
Understand the rabbit’s personality. They’re more like cats; they’re friendly, they’re social, but you have to let them approach you on their terms.
“You can’t just run over and pick them up. They’re ground loving creatures,” Watkins explained. “They’re very frightened if their feet are off the floor. They associate that with a bird of prey; that’s not something they like. Children like to pick up and carry around an animal because that’s what they do with their stuffed toys. That’s probably the total opposite of what a rabbit wants to have done to them.”
Let the rabbit come to you.
“They love to sit on the couch and watch TV. The rabbit is going to be naturally curious, see what the kids are up to, and hop all over them,” Watkins said. “It’s when they’re being chased, they don’t like it.”
Once they’re spayed and neutered, rabbits use a litter box.
”They don’t need to be confined to a cage.”
They’re high-energy animals so they need three to four hours of good exercise every day.
“We recommend they get out of their enclosure and interact with the family,” Watkins said.
Rabbits dig and chew by nature. Wild rabbits in the yard dig burrows. Domestic rabbits have that same instinct.
“A lot of times people will give up rabbits to shelters because, ‘They’ve destroyed my house, they’ve chewed my cords, they’ve dug under my carpet, they’ve gotten under my couch.’ That’s probably the No. 1 reason rabbits are given up to shelters,” Watkins said.
Bunny proof your home. The rabbit only needs one room.
“They prefer the room you’re in,” Watkins said.
Adopt mature rabbits.
“Don’t go to a pet store, or a feed and seed store, and adopt a baby rabbit. You don’t know what the personality of that rabbit’s going to be,” Watkins said.
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