Welcome to Animpedia! Today we will discuss some welfare guidance for rabbits because some people considered that rabbits as prey. Rabbits are predatory animals. Sometimes we can be willing to forget that. Their display of courage may be subtle or daring, but, to the loving eye, always recognizable. There is no question of the rabbit’s bravery. Even the most timid bread can muster a lungful of bites when cornered. As their housemates, we respect their curiosity and laugh with them at their willful silliness. As everyone knows, house rabbits are fantastic pets.
But rabbits are still prey. Rabbits that share a home with humans have their own special means of adapting to the human environment. She will create her own special places, her safe places and happy corners. But if he has access to a window with an outside view, or a door to a lush green yard, his natural curiosity will urge him to find a way out.
Balancing Freedom and Safety: Rabbits as Prey
I have rescued rabbits for almost twenty years. In the beginning, when I had little understanding of the dangers of their world, I would open the sliding glass door in my backyard and let my bunnies in and out as they pleased. This was LA, and the weather was almost always clear, and the yard was small and fully fenced. The rabbits were happy to snuggle under the orange trees and munch on the wild asparagus that grew as ground cover.
Most of the windows in the house lacked screens. One day I got a gash on my thigh the size of Kansas while jumping out the open bedroom window because a hawk had just passed at eye level, aiming for my back porch.
I knew Missy, a sweet black and white Dutchess, was on the porch.
I was screaming, and I’m pretty sure that’s what threw off the hawk, which was stuck in a pine tree that overlooked my yard and was screaming at me. Missy had flattened herself into asparagus. She was safe. I changed my routine and became more alert when playing outside.
Predatory Threats in Urban Settings for Rabbits:
Six years later I lived in another house, still in LA, in the middle of a century-old avocado grove, thick with trees and ivy. Bears roamed at night, deer, skunks: the garden was an oasis on the edge of town, and the avocados drew all kinds of wildlife.
I never let my rabbit out at night. But I thought it would be okay to let the rabbits play near my home office door during the day since I always lived nearby.
Five months after I moved in, I saw the biggest house cat I’d ever seen a pair of bunnies digging holes in my flower garden. I immediately drove him away. She paused slightly beyond my reach and gave me a disinterested look in return.
A week later Missy was enjoying the flowers with her partner, Sparky. Sparky came to me through a friend of a friend, as many unwanted bunnies seem to do. He was so severely abused by the children of his previous owners that the nerve endings on the right side of his face were severed, causing him to fall permanently. He was a scared rabbit, obviously with good reason. The only other creature in the world he tolerated was Missy, who adored him.
The cat I saw was not just a cat but a juvenile mountain lion. And he leapt upon Sparky from the shadow of the trees in front of me, and bit his skull.
I followed him and recovered the dead body of my pet. Missy was hiding somewhere, and I spent the next hour calling out to her, crying, until she pulled her face out of the netting of vines. The mountain lion never really left the garden again. She knew I had more rabbits.
Today I live in the heart of a new city, and I protect my rabbits whenever they venture into my tiny new yard. Missy is now almost fourteen, the longest I’ve ever lived. Two weeks ago she was out in the grass with her new partner Louis. A red-tailed hawk circles overhead, but is miles away. Yet I saw him, cautiously following his winding path. When I opened my door the next morning, a red-tailed hawk was perched on my back fence just a few feet away, just above where Lois had slept earlier in the afternoon.
There is never too much caution when it comes to rabbits because they are prey. It’s nobody’s fault but mine that Sparky died. The lion was just being true to his nature, and I wasn’t careful enough. We want our couples to have full, happy lives, and they’ll go out if they can. But never close your eyes when they are out. It doesn’t have to be a hawk or a mountain lion. Regular dogs and cats also have many risks.
We love our bunnies, who love us in our bunnies way. We owe them not only love but the promise of health and safety of rabbits. Thanks for visiting Animpedia, if you want to know more about rabbits click here.