Rabbits’ Allies Start Marshaling Their Forces

The call came early in the morning from a weeping elderly woman. She wanted to report an impending rabbit massacre at Leisure World in Seal Beach.

Angel Howansky of Los Alamitos told the woman she hadn’t reached the police, but instead had dialed a private number. The woman was inconsolable, insisting she had the right number for the police and that something had to be done. By the end of that Tuesday morning call, Howansky was hooked.

The publicist sent a flurry of press releases, and by Wednesday, the first signs of organized opposition emerged to ridding Leisure World of hares with pellet guns, a proposal that still must be approved by Seal Beach police.

About 30 or 40 elderly Leisure World residents, Howansky and a local city councilman had converged outside a restaurant in the retirement community’s shopping center to protest plans to eliminate the wild cottontails that scavenge through the golf greens and flower beds.

“I didn’t know anything about any rabbits, but she was crying so much it just broke my heart,” said Howansky, 33.

The demonstration came Wednesday as various people suggested ways to save the rabbits and otherwise minimize their impact on the 8,700 residents.

An unidentified woman in Lake Elsinore told a Venice animal rights organization that she would donate 40 of her acres to be a home to the Seal Beach rabbits, said Bill Dyer, spokesman for the group In Defense of Animals.

Dyer’s organization also has offered to help trap the rabbits so they can be neutered and returned to their chomping grounds. “Within five years, they’ll be gone,” he said. “They would live their life out naturally. That’s the most humane solution.”

Meanwhile, the Seal Beach Police Department was pelted with telephone calls Wednesday from Leisure World residents protesting the shooting. Someone had distributed the agency’s phone number at the retirement village.

And Irving Wasserman, 80, a retired Hollywood character actor living in Leisure World, said he hopes to air footage he shot of the rabbits, the protest and people he interviewed on the local public access station.

Leisure World employees also were receiving irate calls.

“Some people call crying, calling us murderers,” said a Leisure World staff member, who asked not to be identified. “It’s hard to be the brunt of anger all day long.”

Officials from the state Department of Fish and Game said it likely wouldn’t approve relocating the rabbits. “You could cause some serious ecological damage if you introduce a community of rabbits into an area with other rabbits,” said Patrick Moore, a spokesman for the agency.