How To Get Rid Of Rabbits

Rabbit
Rabbit by a tree.
(Artwork by Sharon Davis. Contact us for her contact info.)

I’d just enjoyed a weekend camping trip up in the mountains, thoughts of how to get rid of rabbits far from my mind.  Some people hate camping in the snow, but I love the quiet.  I love feeling like I can just get away from it all for a little while and escape from my everyday worries.  Worries like the rabbits.

I love wildlife, at home and in the woods.  At home, we have a bird feeder and my wife and the kids like to keep track of all the different species of birds come by our house.  Of course, the bird seed attracts all kinds of squirrels and chipmunks and we just watch them play outside our window.  Since it’s not as cold in our neighborhood as it is up in the mountains, there’s still a lot of wildlife activity we can enjoy from the warmth and comfort of our home.  I’ve even gotten a couple of great pictures of animals playing just in our backyard.

Last year, my youngest daughter saw a rabbit in our backyard and got really excited.  We got online and figured out it was a cottontail, which is pretty common around here.  The kids named it “CAB” for “cute as a button.”  What can I say?  The kids have their own logic, right?  My wife noticed there were actually a few rabbits that had taken a liking to our yard, and the kids tried to name each one of them.

But, the rabbits stopped being cute as time went on.  I had some young fruit trees I’d planted, and I found gnaw marks on the lower branches and around the trunk.  One of the fruit trees died.  Shrubs, tulip bulbs and my wife’s herb garden were all chewed up and eaten away.  Rabbit droppings were all over the yard, to the point where we couldn’t let the kids just go out and play whenever they wanted.  I wanted to clean it up before they went out there, to prevent them getting sick from touching or playing around the rabbit droppings.  Then, the digging.  Shallow nests were dug up against the back shed and scattered around the yard.  I found a lot of droppings under the stairs leading up to the deck, and wondered where the rabbits were nesting under there.  I stopped enjoying my yard, because all I saw were pests and the damage they were causing.  It was getting to be a real problem, so I needed to figure out how to get rid of rabbits, and fast.  I took the weekend off to camp, and decided to work on the problem when I got home.

I’d unloaded the camping gear from the truck and was inside enjoying dinner with the family when I heard a bump, scrape coming from outside.  Sighing, I knew it had to be the rabbits.  Back to reality, I thought, and decided to call a professional to come out to get rid of the rabbits for me.

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