2024, animals, gardening, Nature, Uncategorized

Rabbit Proof Fence

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Our gardening chores were a lot more onerous this year due to a proliferation of rabbits in the neighborhood. It is not only in our neighborhood. I hear people from all over town complaining how the rabbits are eating flowers and garden plants.

Last year the rabbits devastated our strawberry bed in the back yard. They seemed to leave the front garden alone. This year we counted at least five rabbits at one time in our yard. We decided to take no chances and put up bunny proof fences around both garden beds consisting of wooden stakes and poultry netting with garden staples at the bottom to prevent any enterprising bunny to try to sneak under a slack part of the fence. Here is a bunny in the driveway last evening. I took the photo from the stoep, which accounts for the black metal railings.

The Australian movie Rabbit Proof Fence is about institutionalized racism, but it also highlights what can happen when non-native species are introduced into a new ecosystem. Some British guy in the mid 1800’s let loose twenty four rabbits into Australia so he could hunt them, and by the early 1900’s they had to build massive fences across Australia to keep the rabbits from decimating western Australia. There were no natural predators. I don’t like coyotes, but I sure wouldn’t mind a rogue animal to slip into town now and then to dispatch a few rabbits. Kyrill tries to catch the rabbits but they are too fast for him. I am hopeful our fences will do the trick, but they sure made for a lot of work.

What rabbit themed music, literature, or films are you familiar with? What kind of predators in your neighborhood?

52 thoughts on “Rabbit Proof Fence”

  1. I’ve always enjoyed White Rabbit from Jefferson Airplane. Any references to Alice In Wonderland are always welcome.

    Predators? Yes. Both animal and human.

    Cooper’s hawks nest by the Miami River which is a few hundred yards away. On occasion they have taken birds from my feeders but with extreme street, sewer and water construction all around downtown Franklin, those birds have flown.

    Because of some logistical situations, many registered sex offenders live nearby. I recieve the postcard notices every so often. Clustering of folks with that type of criminal record isn’t rare, unfortunately. I don’t want 45 as a neighbor.

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    2. Husband and I pulled into our church parking lot the other day to see a Coopers Hawk on the cement munching on a pigeon. When we got out of the van the hawk grabbed the pigeon and flew off to eat it undisturbed. I wish it would live in our neighborhood and munch on bunnies.

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  2. At our last house the garden had a fence about the height of your rabbit-proof fence. Nevertheless, one morning I noticed a rabbit inside the fence casually snacking. I approached it slowly, hoping that when it escaped it would reveal how it had gotten in. When it spotted me, it just jumped over the fence.

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  3. I love literary rabbits, so I have a long list, starting with the Beatrix Potter books, Alice in Wonderland (a rabbit and a hare), Winnie the Pooh (Rabbit), etc. My favorite is Watership Down. I love the book and movie and never fail to get teary when I hear the movie’s theme song (Bright Eyes, Art Garfunkel).

    We used to garden a lot, and rabbits were a problem, but they were overshadowed by the local deer, who destroyed our tomatoes, cropped the heads off of blooming flowers, and caused a heartbreaking amount of damage. We live in the Twin Cities suburbs, where there are quite a few predators. For a couple of years we had a fox in our neighborhood, and there are bald eagles, hawks, owls, and an occasional coyote spotting.

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    1. Friends of ours who live near the Badlands have to put really tall fences around their garden and raspberry patch to keep out the deer.

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    2. In an interesting coincidence, my other book club is reading Alice in Wonderland this month. One of the members commented that she had never read it and two others piped up with the same sentiment, so that’s how it got chosen. And I just had the Alice in Wonderland cookbook from the library yesterday. Fun but nothing that I feel the need to re-create in the kitchen.

      I do like Beatrix Potters Peter Rabbit stories, but I refuse to watch the movie that came out a few years ago. I am sure Beatrix Potter was turning over in her grave when it came out. Revenge and meanness and Peter Rabbit do not go to together in the same sentence or in the same movie.

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  5. Rise and Shine, Baboons, from JacAnon,

    Rabbits. Bah. Humbug. I have stated here many times that in this adult version of me, I am now Farmer MacGregor. Chicken wire has been the only real barrier that works most of the time. Our neighbors just constructed their own chicken wire garden fence within a fence that should be effective. But both the neighbors and we have dogs which are the most effective deterrent. Yesterday Phoebe went nose to nose with a baby rabbit under the deck. It was her first rodent within reach and she was fascinated.

    About a month ago at the dog park there was an adorable white puppy, 7 months old according to her person. While walking on the paths around the park I looked up to see a Bald Eagle hovering high above that very visible white dog. I ran as quickly as I could go to within earshot to the group of people with the puppy and pointed upward and shouted, “Grab your puppy!” They did and all was well. I have seen that before at the dog park and in my neighborhood. We also have coyotes, foxes, and various species of hawks.

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  6. I’m knocking on wood as I post this, but we don’t have too much trouble with predators in the yard. Out in front and on the boulevard I think it’s too close to the traffic on Lyndale for critters. If I do plant fresh bulbs in the fall, I cover them with chicken wire for the winter but only for fresh bulbs. Other than that squirrels aren’t digging anything up.

    There are bunnies in the backyard, but not too many of them. Only the stupid bunnies hang out there too much and many of the stupid bunnies over the years have lost their lives. They are fast, but Guinevere is faster.

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  8. I follow a group on Facebook, the artist Sandra Boynton. At the end of every month, there are reminders that when you wake up the next morning, the first day of the new month, you should say “rabbit, rabbit, rabbit” out loud before you utter any other words. This is supposed to bring good luck.

    I see these reminders and I go to bed that night thinking that’s what I’m gonna do the next morning, but it never happens. By the time I remember, I’m supposed to say “rabbit rabbit rabbit” I’ve said plenty of other things – usually to the cat and dog.

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    3. I didn’t know there was a movie. I had been looking for a good representation of the book, which has excellent illustrations.

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  10. There is a huge flock of turkey vultures who roost on the butte near our house. I suppose they count as scavengers, not predators. We have dogs all over the neighborhood but they are not rabbit hunters. I still miss Finian, the orange cat from across the street who only had dewclaws but was a rabbit exterminator extraordinaire.

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  11. There are lots of rabbits up near Two Harbors at my timeshare condo. I’ve seen rabbits, hares, deer, squirrels, chipmunks, and the last time I was there I saw a Franklin’s ground squirrel.

    We have rabbits around here but there are no gardens in this townhome association. All the landscaping is done by the hired lawn care company and planting anything in the ground is verboten. It’s one of the things I don’t like about living here. They really manage the lawn, with all of the herbicides and fertilizers you can imagine. So there are rabbits but they don’t really hang around.

    I hear foxes, owls and sometimes coyotes at night. The sounds are weird and fascinating. Recently, one or more bears have been seen first near Dennison, then near Nerstrand, then south and west farther. A couple days ago a bear cub was seen in southeast Faribault. People talk about seeing cougars quite often. They have been reported near Morristown which is between Sakatah Lake State Park and the Cannon River WMA/AMA. There are a lot of wild places in that area where an animal like that can take cover. There are lots of deer, so a big predator like that could easily take fawns.

    Turkey vultures seem to have a pattern here. I don’t know where they roost at night, but it must be somewhere north of me, which is Northfield. In the morning I see them flying south overhead, singly and in loose pairs. In the evening, I see them returning. There are bald eagles too. I’ve always kept Pippin close to me when I notice bald eagles around. He’s a little big for an eagle but I wouldn’t put it past one to try.

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  12. I’ve told this before, I think. Our first golden retriever came into the house one day with his lips pressed shut and a funny look on his face. We knew something was up. When we cornered him and pried open his jaws, out hopped a baby bunny. The bunny was fine, but very young. We took the bunny outside and secured him under a bush but couldn’t know if his mother would reclaim him. The dog, I imagine, was hoping to keep him for a pet.

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  13. I read “Rabbit, Run” by John Updike. Didn’t like it that much. I loved “Watership Down.” I’ve live trapped a few voracious bunnies in our yard and relocated them to the other side of town in a park, but we usually have one or two every year. You can’t really get rid of them, just discourage them from eating your plants, I guess, with things like pepper spray or fox urine crystals.

    Chris in Owatonna

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  16. I left a book on a plane once: something like The Secret Life of Rabbits… I thought. Doesn’t seem to exist on the internet, tho’ so could it have been this one?

    The Private Life of the Rabbit: An Account of the Life History and Social Behavior of the Wild Rabbit by R. M. Lockey ?

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      1. Wow! I was just really into rabbits, collected them for a while, though people would give me the cutesy cartoon variety, and I really like the natural looking ones.. (Huh – I could have mentioned these a while back when we talked about collections, but it wasn’t during my childhood.)

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  19. I had the pacemaker put in Tuesday. Tomorrow I go back into surgery to have a part of that surgery. These days I feel like Murphy.

    Because I passed out this morning or nearly so, which may have been the fault of a doctor who helped us last night on the Mayo help line out of Rochester, I cannot drive for 3 months. How am I going to cover the 4 miles over and four miles back to see Sandra? I will work it out, despite meeting, a Murphy or two in the process.

    Clyde Murphy

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    3. Clyde, I’m sure you already know about Vine Faith in Action? 507-387-1666. Maybe they can help. I’m sorry to hear about all the troubles/ Murphies.

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  20. I haven’t seen a fox at our place for years, but we have plenty of coyotes and they howl every night and get Bailey all excited, which, in turn, gets Luna and Humphrey all excited. Raccoons are problem for the chickens, we see a few bald eagles, lots of hawks, I’ll say again how destructive the deer are on my crops, they’re already working on the tops of the soybeans. Turkeys eat the crops, I guess it depends on your definition of a predator.
    Mice and rats can be destructive to feed of course. Woodchucks can make holes under foundations. But the barn swallows are so cool, and we love seeing the hawks.

    I’m pretty sure I’ve told the story a long time ago about how I once watched My dad chase down a rabbit in the field and brought it home and gave it to my brother who built a pen for it. I was so impressed that my dad could catch a rabbit! Didn’t work out so well as the rabbit was gone the next morning.
    And many years later, I was able to do the same thing and that’s when I discovered, these little rabbits don’t run very fast. It’s not like their jackrabbits or anything. Another childhood myth shattered.

    When we we’re doing strawberry Gardens, I had to put a short tight fence to keep the rabbits out and a tall fence to keep the deer out. More trouble than it’s worth.

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  23. Our problem is muntjacs. These deers ate all tulips and other flowers.
    We just scare them away. Our back garden is too big for fencing in. So we live with these muntjacs.
    Good luck with your rabbit protection
    The Fab Four of Cley
    🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂

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