Rabbit

By MIKE DIXON

Special to The Capital-Journal

So you've been working in your garden, and one day you stroll to your window to look out with swollen pride upon the beautiful pansies you planted around the base of your bird bath, and to your surprise and horror, they're gone! Then you remember something you read somewhere: cottontails love pansies, especially their tender blossoms.

Now the question is, what are you going to do about it? With neighbors nearby, shooting is not an option. You could go to a garden center and buy rabbit repellent, but you have heard that it washes off in the rain, must be replaced often, and it may be only marginally effective anyway.

You could use fencing; however, you will have to either stake your chicken wire to the ground or plant it several inches beneath the soil. Otherwise, the cottontails will simply burrow under it. Personally, I would rather do without the pansies than raise them under wire like chickens.

May I suggest that you try what may be the most humane method of all for dealing with an unwanted Sylvilagus floridianus (cottontail): capture and relocation.

According to a K-State Cooperative Extension Service publication entitled "Cottontail Rabbits --- Urban Wildlife Damage Control," next to actually excluding rabbits with fencing, "trapping is probably the most practical means of controlling problem rabbits in urban areas."

Like a lot of people, when I first read this I said, "Oh, sure, like now I'm going to start trapping animals like some kind of pioneer or something." But that was a couple of years ago, before I got the wakeup call at the bird bath. Desperate times forced me to desperate measures, and before long, I had purchased a rabbit trap from a local store and was trying to get the knack of it.

Much of the literature on rabbits will advise you to trap them in the winter because there is not much food around. Dried apples and corn are often recommended as rabbit bait for winter. Given a choice of tree bark or dried apples, what beastie wouldn't go for the apples?

The problem is what to do when warm weather returns, the rabbit population explodes, and your budding, sprouting garden becomes a regular rabbit smorgasbord. Curiously, this is something I found little written about.

Catching cottontails in a trap in the spring or summer is a kind of chess match, a battle of wits between human and rabbit. Fortunately, this is not as difficult as it sounds, since cottontails are somewhat limited in the wits department. Even I caught on after watching them for only a couple of days.

The secret is to watch what the rabbits are eating and bait your trap with that. For example, when a rabbit was spotted eating the lower blossoms off my clematis, clematis became the bait. Those little tubes that florists put on the ends of roses do more than keep roses fresh. They are handy to stick in the ground at the back of a trap, and each one will hold several clematis blossoms. Bingo! One rabbit down.

Another rabbit was eating all my morning glory sprouts. After a month of growing morning glories, the vines on my fence were two inches tall. The solution was to get some morning glory seeds, soak them overnight and plant them at the back of the trap so that the rabbit would have to step on the trigger in order to get to the sprouts. After soaking, it took about four days for the seeds to sprout, but it was worth the wait.

No matter how much fun you've had catching your rabbit, once you have it, do not throw it back. Rabbits are not fish; they are garden sharks: the great whites of the landscape.

To get rid of a cottontail, you need only take it a few miles from its home and release it in a spot where it can do no harm. The species has terrible homing skills, and once it is a few miles from your garden, it will never be able to find its way back.

Do not release your rabbit on someone else's property without his or her permission. It may come as a surprise to urbanites, but there actually are people who want rabbits on their property so they can hunt them or so the rabbits will be available as food for other species.

There are even extension service publications that tell how to improve one's rabbit habitat for those who are so inclined. Ask your friends and neighbors. Someone may know a landowner who loves to hunt and would welcome another cottontail. Just make sure you have permission.

Mike Dixon is a master gardener with the Shawnee County Extension program. For gardening help, call the Master Gardener Response Line at 357-GROW on weekday afternoons.

See RABBIT, page 14

Copyright 2001
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