Bunnies are sweet, good-natured,* cuddly, vegan animals. And yet not only are they horrifically abused to test consumer goods (you can avoid supporting such cruelty by looking for the “cruelty-free” label), but they are treated like pariahs in shelters that are already awful to the dogs and cats they claim to care about. Some states which have holding periods for dogs and cats have none for bunnies, allowing shelters to kill them right away with no attempt to rehome them. Even the No Kill movement has largely ignored bunnies. You won’t hear about saving bunnies on the websites of many No Kill advocates. They have resisted calls to add bunnies to statistics when calculating overall community save rates. Many shelters that are saving over 95% of dogs and cats either have no safety net at all for bunnies—turning them away—or they kill them in large numbers but still call themselves No Kill. Even some bunny advocates do them a disservice by choosing death at the pound, rather than have them adopted out to homes with children (buying into the same misanthropy that dog and cat rescuers rejected a decade ago). And now Whole Foods wants people to start eating them. They are trying to create a market for rabbit meat where one does not (and should not) exist.
As we work to create a society where animals are cherished and protected, let’s not leave a single bunny behind. Hoppy Easter!
* Even the grouchy ones deserve love and have the same rights, too.
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