Rabbits Everywhere!

Rabbits, cottontails, bunnies..whatever you want to call them..I have them! I do not raise rabbits, these are the wild sort. It is a cute little brown bunny when there is just one..cuter when there are two..ok..maybe still cute when there are three or four but enough is enough! They are taking over the yard and eating every plant in sight. This evening, I counted seventeen rabbits in my yard! Seventeen!!! They were in the gardens and on the lawn. They came out of the marsh near the bayou and from under the bamboo. Rabbits were running in the lane and peering out from under the azalea bushes. There was even one in the compost! (How and why it got in there is a mystery.) I have never seen so many bunnies! We had lost nearly all of the wild rabbits during Katrina so I was elated to find a nest of babies this spring. There were four teeny, tiny brown babies with great big eyes staring at me when I tried to move a pile of limbs. I carefully replaced the limb and backed away. I thought "This is great! Now we will have a few (key word.."few") rabbits in the yard." I do not have a "few"...they have multiplied.. immensely! We have cottontails, the smaller marsh rabbits and the very large swamp rabbits. Many people will tell you that they are one and the same but if you look at the pictures you can see several differences in them. It is not that I am against having wildlife roam in my yard, but when every green leaf looks like dinner to them, I tend to get a bit annoyed. Something has to be done! I am not sure just how I am to control this bunny population explosion. Shooting them would be one option but unless I am starving I find it hard to shoot something that looks like the Easter Bunny. Live trapping might be easier but just what in the world would I do with seventeen critters after they are trapped?? Ezzy, the dog, tries to keep them out of the yard but if she sees a squirrel, the rabbits are forgotten. For a while, there were a lot of fox denning in the woods by the creek and they were the masters at rabbit hunting. They have moved across the street and have not come to dine in the yard. I suppose if they get hungry enough they will come here to hunt and my extensive herd of bunnies might be significantly thinned. But in the meantime, more garden fences are on the "to-do" list.