Anxious Easter for bunny’s fans
Sugar Bunny, the pet rabbit of Cedar Street residents, has vanished, sending a chill through this quiet Santa Monica neighborhood on Easter Sunday.
Children, parents and dog walkers are on the lookout. Fans have posted signs on the fence of the vacant lot where Sugar held court, and, from all reports, charmed everyone who came by.
“Bring the rabbit back,” said Brett Conrad, 45, who along with his wife and two children are the technical owners of Sugar Bunny. “It’s not your rabbit. It’s a community rabbit.”
The Conrads have owned the furry gray rabbit since 2005. But being an independent sort of bunny, she never much liked life in a cage. The Conrads let her roam free on a vacant, grassy and fenced-in lot next to their home, which has become a one-rabbit petting zoo.
On March 28, Sugar Bunny went missing.
Twice before, rabbit rescuers who thought they were saving a lost bunny have taken the rabbit. But this time is different. Her red-and-yellow collar and identification badge were found inside the fence, raising suspicions that she has been rabbit-napped.
Sugar earned her name when she was a month old, tipping over a sugar bowl. Soon the neighbors were offering her rabbit pellets and produce -- kale, cabbage, and strawberries -- straight from the farmers market. Nannies brought their young charges to visit, and children reached through the wire to pet her. Dogs brushed noses with the rabbit through the fence. Toddlers would burst into tears when told it was time to go home.
“Sometimes she’d follow you along the fence. She was very personable,” said Barbara J. Teresi, 68, who liked to sit in her window every morning, watching the rabbit and her admirers.
Sugar disappeared for the first time a year ago when a woman down the street took her home, thinking she had been abandoned, neighbors said.
Then, on March 18, another neighbor, Denise “D” Smith, 49, saw that Sugar was missing again. When she spotted a strange man and woman at the lot, she questioned them. The woman told Smith she had taken the rabbit to a vet, assuming it was a stray.
Smith found Sugar at the office of Santa Monica veterinarian Kenneth Jones, just two hours before she was to be spayed at the rescuer’s request. Smith intervened and returned Sugar, untouched, to the Conrads. Jones, who examined Sugar, said the rabbit was healthy.
The Conrads bought a collar and badge listing their name and address.
Several weeks ago, yet another concerned resident called the Santa Monica Animal Shelter about the rabbit in the lot. Officials responded to the scene and determined that the rabbit was well cared for and left her alone, said Donn Umber, shelter director.
That opinion, however, is not shared by Cat McIntire at Rabbit Rescue Inc., a not-for-profit rescue group in Downey that was not involved in the rescue attempts. When told about Sugar’s disappearance, she criticized the Conrads.
“What they’ve done is the equivalent of turning a 2-year-old loose in a vacant lot,” she said, calling Sugar easy prey for hawks and prowlers.
As it turns out, the lot’s owners are about to build a large home there and are “a little negative” about the rabbit, Conrad said. The family was designing a new home in their frontyard where children could visit it.
“We were going to put it out at Easter,” said Hunter Conrad, 13.
Neighbors can only speculate about the fate of Sugar Bunny: Maybe a passerby saw the rabbit as a timely Easter present. Maybe a rabbit rescuer decided to conduct a permanent rescue. One woman said she saw a hawk around the time the rabbit disappeared. But how could a hawk remove a collar?
A few adults have uttered the unthinkable, not to be shared with the children: that some people serve rabbit for Easter dinner, braised, with rosemary and sage.
Sugar’s fans have not given up on a happy ending.
“It would be so cool if she came back on Easter Sunday,” said Smith, who plans to light a candle for Sugar today.
Even then, Curtiss “C.J.” Conrad, 10, is not ready to turn the other cheek. The rabbit snatcher, he said, “is going to be bitten a million times by my snakes.”
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