Rabbit Quandary

Even I will admit its cute!

However, they do reproduce  like, well, like rabbits. 

Coupled with our efforts to keep out the deer and chicken  eating predators (the ten foot high fence around our crops along with our deer and predator harassing Great Pyrenees) has the effect of making our farm a 'rabbit safe zone.'

Then there are our crops, especially this time of year  where everywhere you look we're growing lettuce and kale and sweet and spicy mustards. Along with radishes and carrots  (at least we're trying to do our best with the carrots).

It's like we're going out of our way to protect and then feed the burgeoning rabbit population.

Ten years ago, with a much smaller rabbit population and a fence that didn't perform as well as the double fence we have today I didn't mind feeding a few rabbits.  Today, though, everywhere I look there's a rabbit eating.  If its not lettuce, its kale, or mustard, pac choi, baby broccoli and cauliflower. Rab, chard, beets, radishes and the tops out of our struggling carrot crop.

What should we do?

Reduce the rabbit population?

We could unleash the hunters?  (It's hard to believe the number of people who ask me if they  can come out and shoot rabbits).

Or put out traps  (not like the ones in the movies or cartoons.  Those things with the snapping jaw - the sort of trap we use is a cage where  the rabbit walks in and steps on a pedal that closes the door behind it, locking it inside).

And then, of course, there's a tax. A rabbit tax, if you will.  (this isn't a tax on rabbits but a tax on  vegetables.  A percentage of the vegetables grown goes to feed rabbits.

Unfortunately, like most taxes this isn't as simple as it seems on the surface. How are we going to go about getting the extra vegetables needed to feed that fat little rabbit in the picture and all of his relatives and neighbors?   But enough of that for now. Maybe later we could develop a course on taxing for rabbits - but not now.

So I think where we've gone with this is to show that nothing,  including acting like cute little bunny rabbits, is when you go into the details, that simple.

But, if you have a magic solution.  One that solves the problem without putting us into an ethical, moral or economic quandray, let's hurry up and put it into action.