Hopping Mad : Customers Hate to See Anaheim Restaurant’s Bunnies Go

On Wednesday afternoon, Marla Behm was on her knees in the grass outside El Torito Restaurant and Cantina, coaxing four rabbits to eat some lettuce from her hand.

“I love them,” said Behm, of Fullerton, who visits the restaurant so she can watch the rabbits while she eats. “I give them all my leftovers, my hors d’oeuvres too. They eat anything. Even tortilla chips.”

But for Behm and other customers who love El Torito’s rabbits, it may soon be a case of hare today, gone tomorrow.

The domestic rabbits, abandoned by their owners, have lived for years in burrows in the hilly, shaded greenbelt that separates the El Torito and Charley Brown’s restaurants and have become an added attraction for some restaurant customers.

But in recent months, the rabbit population has exploded, and the furry animals have become victims of malnutrition, disease and motorists, who have run over several in the parking lot and nearby streets, said Lt. Marie Hulett-Curtner, public education officer and spokeswoman for Orange County Animal Control.

In the hope of finding homes for the estimated 75 rabbits, the management of the restaurants, county animal control officials and the nonprofit House Rabbit Society have begun an adoption program--much to the dismay of some restaurant patrons.

“I think they should leave some of them here to keep the atmosphere,” said Tom Hruden, an Anaheim businessman who frequently eats lunch at El Torito. “But they should let people take (some of) them as pets when they’re young.

Linda Buckley and Clydora White said they always choose a window table in the bar so they can watch the rabbits.

“That’s why we come here. We enjoy watching them,” said Buckley, who works nearby and believes the rabbits should be left alone. “I’ve had rabbits at home. But here they have a place to be free.”

The rabbits do not pose a public health risk, Hulett-Curtner said, but they do not fare well on the diet that restaurant customers offer them.

“Rabbits don’t live a very good life at the restaurant,” she said. “People think it’s OK to abandon them. But they’re dying of disease and malnutrition. They’re domesticated animals and they can’t care for themselves. They need real homes. We need to stop the cycle.”

With no one willing to assume responsibility for the rabbits’ welfare, the adoption program is the only option, Hulett-Curtner said. A spokeswoman for El Torito Restaurants Inc. said there are too many rabbits for the restaurant to care for.

Signs will be posted later this week warning people not to abandon their pets, which is a misdemeanor, she said.

But the rabbit population can be expected to keep growing because rabbits can reproduce, well, like rabbits.

Laurie Gigous, co-chapter manager of the 250-member House Rabbit organization, said the group is looking for bunny lovers willing to treat the rabbits as house pets. People wishing to adopt the rabbits will be screened by the society.

“It’s hard to find homes to conform what we think they should have. You want the best for them,” she said. “We don’t want the bunny put in a back-yard hutch with food and water.”

But restaurant guests Buckley and White say they won’t come back if the rabbits disappear.

“We probably won’t come here to eat. They’ll lose two good customers,” White said.