COUNTYWIDE : Will Bunny Wear Out Welcome?

Bunnies are warm, furry and cute. They don’t bark. They can be trained to use a litter box. And with Easter just around the corner, pet stores have ordered extra bunnies to meet the inevitable demand.

But beyond the fun of owning a bunny, the novelty can erode faster than the paint off an Easter egg, animal advocates say.

The biggest problem usually comes a week or even a day after Easter, said Sgt. Marie Hulett-Curtner, an Orange County animal control officer. That’s when animal shelters start getting reports of bunnies, ducklings and chicks showing up at neighborhood parks.

These are post-Easter strays.

“We really discourage people from going out and buying these guys,” Hulett-Curtner said. “They look so cute and adorable in the store . . . but people don’t realize they won’t always look so cute. Bunnies grow up and require more care, more food. And they’re great escape artists, so they can become more of a hassle than what people want them to be.”

People considering a bunny for themselves or a child at Easter, she said, should read about rabbit care and needs beforehand so they can make an informed, thoughtful decision.

“There are a lot of abandonments after Easter,” said Jean Sleeper, a Los Alamitos High School biology teacher and co-founder of the Kinship With All Life Foundation in Westminster. A few years ago, word spread that Nature Park in Cypress was a bunny haven, and the park became the dumping ground for more than 100 unwanted bunnies and full-grown rabbits. For months, Sleeper tried to find homes and care for the scruffy, sickly and injured rabbits running around the park.

The city eventually rounded up and killed most of the park’s unwanted rabbits. The city’s get-tough stance included a policy that no new rabbits would be allowed to stay in the park, and the city tattooed the current 20 or so to enforce it.

People who learn about rabbits and still want one will discover that they make wonderful, almost ideal pets, said Gayle R. Roberts, an Irvine veterinarian. Rabbits don’t need constant attention, they can get by with a simple diet of alfalfa pellets and water, they don’t require vaccinations and they’re generally clean animals, Roberts said.

But rabbits do have unique needs, she said. Like cats, rabbits can develop fur balls in their throats. But unlike a cat, a rabbit cannot vomit. So unless the owner is watchful, the rabbit might stop eating and die from a clogged throat, she said.

Improperly holding a rabbit can also cause severe injury, Roberts said. A scared rabbit being held incorrectly, with hind legs dangling, will try to hop away, she said. But the dangling hind legs are powerful enough to snap the rabbit’s spine, causing paralysis, she said.

But overall, rabbits work well as indoor or outdoor pets and require about as much care as a cat, Roberts said.

The Kinship With All Life Foundation supplies free bunny information brochures to anyone who mails a self-addressed stamped envelope to 15652 Briarcliff St., Westminster, Calif. 92683. The Orange County Animal Shelter in Orange also gives away copies of the brochure.

Rabbits “are the most wonderful pets,” Sleeper said. “But people need to be responsible caretakers.”