Rabbits brighten Longview seniors' lives one hop at a time

TEXAS -- Residents at Buckner Westminster Place thought they were in for something special when the senior living facility’s staff brought three outdoor bunnies to live in the courtyard.

They had no idea.

“I just was thankful we were getting them,” said Bettye Brantley, 80. “It was something to play with.”

Brantley said she feeds the rabbits — named Bucky, Becky and Belinda — every day.



Resident Bettye Brantley pets one of the rabbits
 living at Buckner Westminster Place Wednesday,
August 13, 2014. (Les Hassell/News-Journal Photo)

 “They don’t know my name, but they know me,” she said. “We enjoy them, really we do.”

The rabbits were brought in about a year ago after a cleanup occurred when the rabbit population exploded in a Longview neighborhood.

Now, Buckner has six rabbits for its residents. Three outdoor rabbits live in the courtyard of the assisted living portion of the complex, where 30 residents reside. Three indoor, “potty-trained” rabbits live in the memory care portion of the facility with 25 residents, said Wes Wells, executive director.

“Our first three bunnies came through a rescue,” he said. “I guess there had been a little bunny explosion in somebody’s backyard. So we were excited to have the opportunity to help with that.”




Resident Marjorie Morris pets one of the rabbits
 living at Buckner Westminster Place on Wednesday in Longview.

The rabbits gave the residents something to connect with and look out for, Wells said.

“It is really neat, every morning before breakfast people come out and the rabbits are real active. They are feeding at that time, they are checking to make sure they are all right,” he said. “They have given them names, and it is something to keep up with kind of like having a pet.”

The second set of three rabbits — C.J., Velvet and Serena — arrived through a different rescue organization.

Wells said he and his residents were were hoping to have a litter of rabbits, but so far have had little luck.

“We made sure we had a male and two females, but we felt like there might have been too much pressure on that guy so nothing has happened yet,” he said. “We may have to bring in another male rabbit and see what happens.”



Resident Marjorie Morris pets one of the rabbits
living at Buckner Westminster Place Wednesday,
August 13, 2014. (Les Hassell/News-Journal Photo)

Marjorie Morris, 92, said having the rabbits had been a bright spot of her year.

“We thought that would be exciting to see a live rabbit out here,” she said, adding she liked it when “they just frolic among themselves at times.”

The seizure
Buckner’s rabbit experiment came after a hoarding situation in the neighborhood of Willow Springs Drive off Harrison Road in West Longview.

“I really believe that there was other personal issues that were going on,” said Jacqui Lynch, Longview senior Animal Control officer. “It started out with the two rabbits that she adopted. ... I believe she believed both the rabbits were male, and one ended up obviously being male and one female. For some reason she just thought it would be great to turn them out into her backyard.

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The 79 rabbits picked up after a multi-day effort in the neighborhood were the vast majority of all rabbit calls taken by Longview Animal Control during the past two years.

Rabbit rescue groups said they have seen an uptick in the city’s rabbit population, but the animals prompt very few calls because, in small numbers, the damage they do is limited.

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“We were having to be out there at 8 a.m. in the morning trying to figure out how many there were, where they were getting out and how many were getting out,” Lynch said. “They were actually going into other peoples’ gardens and eating all the flowers and doing a lot of damage to peoples personal gardens ... Dogs go crazy when they see rabbits ... There was one house, I believe that the rabbits had actually built a whole mound and were burrowed up in there.”

Due to the work of rescue groups and places like Buckner that took them in, many of the rabbits caught were saved.

Lynch said it was impossible to know if the rabbits around the neighborhood these days are among those that escaped from the home.

Rabbit populations are infamous for a rapid growth rate.



One of the outdoor rabbits living at Buckner Westminster
Place huddles under a shrub Wednesday, August 13, 2014.
 (Les Hassell/News-Journal Photo)

According to a 2006 analysis by Dana Krempels of the University of Miami, in seven years a single female rabbit through her descendants could mathematically produce an astounding 184.6 billion rabbits.

“Since unspayed rabbits generally have a shorter life span than unspayed cats, it might be unrealistic to expect a female to live a full seven years if she’s reproducing at that rate,” Krempels wrote. “Even so, the descendants of that initial female, reproduction left unchecked, are quite capable of bringing that number into the millions in only a few years.”

Rabbit gestation lasts between 28 and 31 days, and because they are induced ovulators, mother rabbits can be impregnated again within minutes of giving birth, Krempels said. If a female rabbit was always with a male rabbit, it could produce a new litter every month.

(Longview News-Journal - Aug 18, 2014)