Leisure World’s Rabbits Dodge Exterminators’ Pellet

A controversial plan to shoot hundreds of wild rabbits at Leisure World in Seal Beach has been rejected by the city’s chief of police.

Police Chief Michael Sellers said in a statement Monday that he will deny a request by California Agri-Control Inc., a Riverside pest-control company, to be allowed to shoot the rabbits with pellet guns late at night.

“Based on what I saw and what I read,” Sellers told the Seal Beach City Council in announcing his decision, “it was not safe at this time to discharge a weapon in a residential area. I did not see a safe way.”

While a city ordinance prohibits the discharge of firearms or compressed-air guns within city limits, the chief has the right to suspend enforcement in cases he deems appropriate. The request by the extermination company for special permission to shoot the cottontails was made last week following complaints by some residents that the animals were overrunning their golf course, eating their flowers and leaving messes on sidewalks and lawns.

“We’re being overrun with rabbits,” Jack Holloway, president of Mutual 15--one of five independent Leisure World areas that had formally approved the shooting--said at the time. “The droppings are all over the place, and our residents, some of them in their 90s, are tracking it into their houses.”

The possibility of a slaughter, however, drew a storm of protest from animal-rights activists and animal lovers, many of them at Leisure World, who argued that shooting rabbits is inherently inhumane.

“There’s been hundreds of calls,” said Sgt. Tim Olson, a spokesman for the Seal Beach Police Department, “and they were overwhelmingly in favor of not touching the rabbits.”

The department also received dozens of letters from across the nation, Olson said. He could not say whether the protests had affected the chief’s decision. “He could have gone either way on it,” the sergeant said.

Activists opposed to the shooting said they were happy with Chief Sellers’ decision. “We are pleased that the shooting has been rejected,” Bill Dyer, a spokesman for Mill Valley-based In Defense of Animals, said at Monday night’s council meeting. “We’re not for violence in this world.”

Members of Mutual 9, which also approved shooting the rabbits, immediately called for a meeting later this week with the police chief, city manager and representatives of Leisure World. “I hope we can come to a reasonable solution,” said Lou Eversmeyer, president of Mutual 9. “I don’t want my grandchildren playing on rabbit turds.”

Under Sellers’ ruling, the extermination company still may trap and poison the rabbits, something it has been doing for about eight years. “The only thing the chief denied,” Olson said, “was the permit to shoot them with pellet guns.”