Bunny Army Overruns a Long Beach Campus

Ace! NewsFlash

LONG BEACH, Calif.—The Easter bunnies of Long Beach are multiplying like rabbits.

Hundreds of bunnies—some of them fugitives from Easters past—lounge in the shade and hop alongside students of Long Beach City College, a small, sunny campus south of Los Angeles. They also fight bloody turf wars, burrow deep holes in the lawns, and devour thousands of dollars of landscaping. "It's just gotten out of hand," said Tim Wootton, deputy director of facilities and a member of the school's Rabbit Population Management Task Force, or as he calls it, the Bunny Committee. The task force's task: a massive round-up of abandoned bunnies and their offspring.

Rabbit, Run

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A rabbit sat on the campus of Long Beach City College Thursday.

The college began capturing rabbits last month to regain control. Some will be given away for adoption. Others may be shipped off to sanctuaries. The remaining bunnies will be neutered and released on campus. At least one rabbit—a large white male nick-named Houdini for his ability to evade capture— mounted a gallant resistance for a time.

Easter may seem like an odd time to spring a sterilization program on cute bunnies. After all, the rabbit is a symbol of fertility, and is believed by some to be linked to a pagan holiday that predated Easter.

But to bunny advocates and school officials, the timing couldn't be more apt. They lay the blame for the school's rabbit problem firmly at the paws of the Easter Bunny. For years, they say, families have been buying bunnies around Easter, only to abandon them when the pet becomes too much work. "Everybody wants to buy their kid the Easter Bunny," said Caroline Charland of Bunny Bunch, a nonprofit animal rescue group assisting the college with its bunny-control plan. "A few months later the child is not interested and the family dumps them."

As a destructive force cloaked in cuteness, bunnies are hard to beat. Billions of rabbits overran Australia after two dozen were imported there from Europe in the 1800s. Without severe winters, the rabbits thrived, consumed native plants and prompted serious erosion. More recently, 1,000 rabbits have made their home on the campus of the University of Victoria in British Columbia, where bunnies and gardeners are locked in battle over the school's prized rhododendron garden.

Pet owners figured the Long Beach campus was a good place to drop their unwanted rabbits because there was already a small wild population here, school officials said. Workers felt sorry for the critters and installed feeders. School officials say there are more than 300 rabbits on the 163-acre campus. On a recent day outside the library, students were gathered in small cliques around the grassy quad. So were dozens of bunnies. Most of the rabbits sat under the shade of a giant juniper tree. Others dug frantically and chased each other in circles.

"Now why—why are they doing that?" asks Mr. Wootton, the facilities manager, as he watched two black rabbits scratching at the roots of a plant. He recalls one evening when he was called to campus to handle a blackout and found himself alone, surrounded by hundreds of rabbits. "It was eerie," he says.

Some have grown attached to the bunnies. "You kind of get used to it," said Edwin Guerra, a 20-year-old sophomore sitting in the midst of the bunnies. Mr. Guerra said the school could do with fewer rabbits, but he didn't want to see them all disappear.

Bunny advocates say the campus is a poor sanctuary. "Rabbits are extremely territorial. They beat each other up and kill each other," says Jacque Olson, a college employee who is part of the effort to control the bunny population. "When a rabbit is abandoned it's absolutely terrified. They hop right up in your lap and want you to save them and take them home."

Over the years, Ms. Olson did take many home. At one time, she had 50 campus bunnies in her back yard. She recently had to give them away when she moved to a small apartment that doesn't allow pets. Ms. Olson, and a coworker, Physical Education Associate Prof. Donna Prindle, felt the time had come to confront the bunny problem once and for all. Ms. Prindle approached school officials, who agreed to a sterilization plan.

In addition to round-ups, the school is posting large signs around campus warning that abandoning pets comes with a $500 fine. Campus police are on high alert for bunny-dumpers, school officials said. A few years ago, Ms. Olson rounded up 100 rabbits on the south side of campus, and found other homes for them. Only two rabbits on that part of campus evaded her. "Unfortunately, one was male and one was female," she said. Within six months, the population on that side of campus had climbed back to 100 rabbits, she said.

But Ms. Olson and Ms. Prindle have reinforcements. Last month, volunteers helped them catch 100 rabbits to be neutered. The surgeries were done in two days by a team of veterinarians from nearby Western University of Health Sciences. Future round-ups are planned. Ms. Olson and Ms. Prindle tend to the recovering rabbits in what used to be the school's carpentry department. One corner of the rabbit recovery room serves as a makeshift maternity ward—some of the caught rabbits were already pregnant. The babies may be given up for adoption or sent to a sanctuary.

Among the rabbits wrangled in the first round-up were female mates of Houdini, the escape artist. The white male would boldly check on the caged females, and then disappear. "Once we had him surrounded. There were four of us," said Ms. Prindle. "He still got away." Earlier this week, Houdini hopped through the open door of the recovery room. This time, he didn't resist. "He gave himself up," Ms. Prindle said.

The women put Houdini in a cage near his friends. A tag on his cage reads "Needs Neutering."

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