am buying a rabbit. wish me good luck!

[pianistimo]

it's for a kindergarten project on rabbits.  help!  tommorrow this poor rabbit will be the subject of intense scrutiny.

[elspeth]

Good luck! My, that poor bunny, so much pressure... you'll have to keep us posted on it, et us know if it starts developing phychoses or anything under the scrutiny...

My boss has a pet rabbit and it's really vicious, it only likes the women in his family. Every time he goes near it it tries to bite him or kick him... mind you, if I was in a cage and he tried coming too close to me, my reaction'd probably be fairly similar...

[pianistimo]

well...they were fresh out of rabbits.  the pet store owner said that three came in - and they went all in the same day.  now, the five year old is asking for a kitten.  i blame this entirely on this school project.  (she's always liked animals since she was young - so i guess not entirely on the teacher). 

vicious rabbits, eh.  even going so far as to kick?  wow.  i didn't realize rabbits could become this way. 

[mycrabface]

Be careful though.. Its very easy for them to get skin diseases..

[shortyshort]

Make sure it's not a wild killer rabbit, as in Monty Pythons "Holy Grail" 
Shorty

[elspeth]

I wasn't allowed pets when I was growing up - it was all my sister's fault, she was allergic to anything furry.

Any animal can be temperamental, people just have a perception of the small cute ones that they won't grow up stroppy but they can easily! It's just a bit more of a surprise, and can be quite tricky to train out... after all, how do you discipline a rabbit?

[shortyshort]

after all, how do you discipline a rabbit?

You could always threaten to eat it 

Shorty

[elspeth]

My grandmother used to make wonderful rabbit pie, unfortunately we never found the recipe among her other cookbooks after she died - such a shame.

[pianistimo]

i would never allow a pet to be eaten.  once it is named - it is off limits.  but, my son said two days ago that if we got any sort of pet -he would throw it out the upstairs window.  i said - no you're not.  (i don't think he would really) - but he hates animals in his room - including the cat.  i told him it would only be in his sister's room -but he thought the smell would affect his room.  so, we are at a pet impasse.  the little one and i are going back to the pet store today.  perhaps a kitten or gerbil.  something small. 

[Floristan]

Before you buy a bunny for a kindergarten class, have a look at some information from a group very concerned about the welfare of bunnies, the House Rabbit Society:

www.rabbit.org

You really need to understand the responsibility you're taking on.

[timothy42b]

after all, how do you discipline a rabbit?

Duh!  Use the Holy Handgrenade of Antioch. 

[pianistimo]

holy handgrenade of antioch?  on a rabbit.  far be it from me to hurt a bunny rabbit.  with a hand grenade no less.  thanks for the info, floristan!  but, as i see it - it is very inhumane to neuter male rabbits.

[thalbergmad]

Duh!  Use the Holy Handgrenade of Antioch. 

And the number of the counting shall be 3.

Rabbits are great for target practice coz they can move well quick and turn about very fast as well.

Much more fun than clay pidgeon shooting.

Thal

[pianistimo]

poor poor bunnies.

[Floristan]

thanks for the info, floristan! but, as i see it - it is very inhumane to neuter male rabbits.

You have the most bizarre attitudes.

What is inhumane is bringing unwanted animals into the world.  Even PETA, which is all about the ethical treatment of animals, fully supports spaying and neutering.

https://www.peta.org/mc/factsheet_display.asp?ID=134

[pianistimo]

yes.  but would you personally take your pet bunny for the operation.  i took my kitty after her first litter - but i felt terrible afterwards.  like i betrayed her.  she had such cute kittens the first time.  then, when i realized someday she would die - i thought about how many more she could have had.

i guess i'm bad for animal control.  i think humans aren't fully in control of animal control anyways.  look at who's improving numbers.  wolves, bears, predators.  and who's diminishing?  harmless bunnies.

[timothy42b]

yes.  but would you personally take your pet bunny for the operation.  i took my kitty after her first litter - but i felt terrible afterwards.  like i betrayed her.  she had such cute kittens the first time.  then, when i realized someday she would die - i thought about how many more she could have had.

i guess i'm bad for animal control.  i think humans aren't fully in control of animal control anyways.  look at who's improving numbers.  wolves, bears, predators.  and who's diminishing?  harmless bunnies.

This is an easy trap to fall into.  Nobody wants to feel bad about what they did to a soft fuzzy animal - so in order to take care of themselves and their own emotions, they are willing to let the animals suffer.  This is a case for tough love.  Those critters need to be neutered to spare more pain for more animals.

[elspeth]

look at who's improving numbers.  wolves, bears, predators.  and who's diminishing?  harmless bunnies.

Problem with that argument is that rabbits (if you let them) will breed like, well, rabbits... whereas any given female bear will only have up to three cubs in a year and won't usually breed again until two years later. And anybody going out shooting rabbits does it because they're burrowing up good farmland, not because it's 'sport'. And rabbits can live practically anywhere there's soil and vegetation, but bears need a much bigger territory, and the ice caps are melting and good forest ranges are being cut down in the name of commerce... sorry for ranting a bit, but you all know I have a thing about bears!

[timothy42b]

Yes, good point.

Most prey species will breed until they destroy the food supply in their environment and then the population crashes, with most of them starving or dying of disease.  Deer are a classic case - left alone they will always multiply until they consume all the browse, then die off to a minimum population while the vegetation replaces itself over a few years, then repeat the cycle.

The "average" carrying capacity of a piece of land might be 10 deer, but you'll never have 10 deer on it.  You'll have 2, then 100, then 2, then 100, etc.  And those 100 are pretty skinny, miserable, and disease and pest ridden. 

Predator populations follow the prey;  as prey increases so do number of predators, and vice versa.  It's not clear that they have much real impact, perhaps they slow the cycle somewhat. 

[Floristan]

yes. but would you personally take your pet bunny for the operation.

Yes, I would.  I've always had my pets neutered or spayed.  If you get a pet from the SPCA or Animal Care and Control, you have to pay for spaying or neutering before they'll give you the animal, which I think is a good idea.  I've only ever gotten pets from the shelter.  With so many animals in shelters and at rescue societies like the House Rabbit Society, I don't understand why people go to pet stores to buy pets.

i guess i'm bad for animal control. i think humans aren't fully in control of animal control anyways. look at who's improving numbers. wolves, bears, predators. and who's diminishing? harmless bunnies.

The populations of wild animals are a whole other story, which others above have discussed well.  I'm just concerned with the populations of animals people keep as pets.  The only way to responsibly control those populations and NOT end up with unwanted animals is through spaying and neutering.  Bunnies breed, as someone above said, like bunnies!  The House Rabbit Society has hundreds of sad and tragic stories of the conditions in which they find unwanted rabbits.  While some get turned in to local humane societies, many are found abandoned and starving, and these pet rabbits are not very good at surviving in the wild. 

Rabbits are a lot more responsibility than people realize.  They are definitely more work than a cat or a dog (even with the twice daily walks).  They have some very peculiar needs and behaviors.  They are NOT ideal pets for small children.  People tend to think of them as animated plush animals rather than living creatures.  Learning about them and thinking through what caring for a rabbit really means is essential.  Many of the House Rabbit Society's unwanted bunnies were bought for children (often at Easter).  The children couldn't care for them because care is difficult, and they get bored with them (bunnies' personalities are more subtle than a dog or cat), and the parents don't want to care for them.  These are the lucky rabbits, the ones that end up with the HRS. 

[pianistimo]

animated plush animals.  yes.  that's probably right.  my daughter was telling me how she was going to brush the bunnies hair.  the only thing is - we decided not to get a bunny because there weren't any at the pet store that day.  since then, her mind has turned to kittens.  so we are probably getting a kitten sometime.

sorry, about worrying you - elspeth - about the bears.  i suppose everyone is right about the population of wild animals being contingent not just on people - but on environmental conditions.  funny you mention deer, tim42b and thal - because here it is like that, too.  some summers there are 2-3 and other summers a huge group of them.  pa is known hunting territory - so probably after hunting season they are culled way down.  i personally do not like hunting and when i hear a shot gun - all i can think is what if it was the other way around.  the deer going around hunting down humans. 

but, in alaska - with the grizzlies - i don't think it is wrong to kill afew that linger in town - and for the black bear to move them farther back in the woods.  moving grizzlies back into the woods is just setting up hikers and people who aren't expecting a bear attack - to be quite visciously mauled.  somehow - i think black bears are kind of like dogs.  they are usually looking for garbage and not humans.

[ahinton]

I love rabbits. I know that "ada" probably won't agree, since she lives in a country where there's probably only about one human to every twenty of the little creatures, but if they're wild and then shot and hung for the correct amount of time and cooked with imagination and skill, they can be just wonderful! Ask any Frenchman...

Best,

Alistair

[elspeth]

but, in alaska - with the grizzlies - i don't think it is wrong to kill afew that linger in town - and for the black bear to move them farther back in the woods.  moving grizzlies back into the woods is just setting up hikers and people who aren't expecting a bear attack - to be quite visciously mauled.  somehow - i think black bears are kind of like dogs.  they are usually looking for garbage and not humans.

Are you really trying to imply that killing bears is alright just because some hikers are ignorant about the territory they're hiking in? If you're 'not expecting an attack' why are you in bear territory in the first place? Or that if you go to live somewhere in the middle of bear territory you should be able to kill them rather than accepting they're there and they will come into town sometimes? Certainly, if one gets a taste for people or really starts doing damage there's an argument for it in individual cases. I am not saying I don't sympathise with anyone who gets on the wrong end of a bear - but you go into his territory, you play by his rules. I've travelled a fair bit in bear territory, with experienced guides, and the first thing they've always done is go through rules of how you behave when you're there, both to protect yourself and the animals. You go in in ignorance, the bear may well attack you - not because it's nasty but because it's a predator and you didn't show it enough respect.

[pianistimo]

i'm not as worried about bears in the wild as bears in town, elspeth - and somehow i knew that i might rile you up on this one.  the pictures that you take certainly make people more appreciative for the bears circumstances and their habitat (which is encroached upon more and more).  i suppose that what i meant was why is it easy to shoot rabbits and hard to shoot bears which are more dangerous?  that's all.  to tell you the truth - if it was me - i would try to tranquilize even the brown bear and just move it farther away.  there are school children that have to walk to busstops in anchorage and some do not favor shooting the bear and basically give equal rights to both bear and schoolchildren.

[elspeth]

Ah, fair enough, that I can let you off with! Sorry for going on at you, but bears and their conservation are one of my favourite topics...

They have a scheme for the schoolkids in Churchill, up in Canada, that the school bus stops door to door for them - it's practical as the town is so small and the polar bears are a lot more dangerous than grizzlies - polars are the only predator that actually makes a habit of hunting people, rather than opportunistically having a go if there's a human around not taking sensible precautions. They have a bear jail there - any bear that starts making a habit of coming into town, they lock it up for a few weeks and it gets nothing but snow (not cruel as it's the end of the summer and the bear wouldn't be eating anyway) so that it doesn't form any associations between town and food. Then, after a sensible interval, they airlift the bear off to the coast a few hundred miles away so the chance of it coming back is pretty minimal. The people in Churchill always get my respect, they've gone and lived in a really hostile environment with some of the most dangerous predators around and come up with a sensible management programme that works for both sides, and the number of bears they have to shoot for their own safety is absolutely minimal. Hurrah for them!

[pianistimo]

dear elspeth,

that is truly a novel approach and one that sensibly works.  i'm all for it. AND, for the bus that goes from door to door.  i like that.  lately, i think the grizzly that had been around my parents home for several years has left.  it was dumpster diving and didn't want to leave when it found out how to open the lid by getting on top and jumping or bashing it around.  they had to literally tie the thing shut after dumping.  and, my mom said - whenever she took out the trash - she'd be looking around to see if the bear was around.  but, hey - animals do have to eat.  and dumpsters are an easy 'grocery store.'

it's really not anything that the animal has 'done wrong.'  and - as you say - solvable.  they ended up almost putting the garbage dumpsters under lock and key. 

[elspeth]

There's almost invariably a solution to these things... it just (as you probably noticed!) really winds me up when people decide the animal is a problem rather than thinking 'I've moved in with the bear, not vice versa, so maybe I'd best compromise with him.' I think the world'd be a better place if we started compromising with it more...

[ahinton]

There's almost invariably a solution to these things... it just (as you probably noticed!) really winds me up when people decide the animal is a problem rather than thinking 'I've moved in with the bear, not vice versa, so maybe I'd best compromise with him.' I think the world'd be a better place if we started compromising with it more...

I take your point as far as it goes, but I do feel that, wherever humans have live and moved and had being, they have compromised something - and in some cases and places perhaps everything. We pollute the atmosphere, alter nature with genetic engineering (and I don't just mean the relatively recent GM activities of the Monsantos of this world - I'm referring, for example, to the transportation of various seeds from place to place and the encouraging of interbreeding and cross-pollination that would not likely have occurred without prior human intervention that has taken place over many centuries).

People move in - bears get to be moved out. Lions have been known only recently to attack and kill elephants in Africa and even this has been put down (rightly or wrongly) - albeit indirectly - to the fallout of certain consequences of human activity in their vicinity that has affected the behaviour of certain species. Apart from naturally occurring land mass movements, climatic changes, the effects of natural selection and the like, nothing and no one has changed what happens (or how) on the earth's surface as much as has mankind - but this is nothing new, for we've been doing it for millennia. What many people do not realise is that even the various "green" initiatives that are now increasingly being promoted and implemented will likewise cause all manner of changes to the earth and to the creatures on it - but it is only mankind that will implement these changes. It must therfore be concluded that there can never be any compromise at all, for even if humans cease one activity that might compromise or endanger other species, they will substitute another that will do the same, albeit differently. I'm not, of course, suggesting that all such activity has had or will have only adverse consequences - far from it - but what it will invariably do is have consequences over which no other species will be able to exercise any control.

Best,

Alistair