Rabbits in the Garden: What Do I Do?

Reader Contribution by S.M.R. Saia
Published on June 5, 2010
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“Now, my dears,” said old Mrs. Rabbit one morning, “you may go into the fields or down the lane, but don’t go into Mr. McGregor’s garden: your father had an accident there; he was put in a pie by Mrs. McGregor.” – Beatrix Potter

Back in the very beginning of April, I went out to check on the state of things in the garden, and I was dismayed to find that something had not only been chomping on the leaves of my strawberry plants, but had also gone fussing through my garlic. It looked as if whatever it was had managed to eat half a dozen of the garlic plants. It had left behind a little cave of straw and a bunch of muddy footprints. My guess was I had rabbits in the garden, because we have them in the yard every year, usually in a burrow under one of our sheds. I poked around the garden fence some and I found the spot where they must have come in, where there was about a two-inch gap between the bottom of the rabbit guard wire and the ground. I plugged it up and went around to inspect the fence perimeter and it all seemed okay. There was no further damage the next night, so I assumed that the buffet was now closed.

Um … wrong.

Some days later, I was moving some straw around in the garden and I unearthed a rabbit’s nest. There were 4 babies and no sign of Mom. I suspect that Mom may not have been around for a few days, since I had plugged up the hole in the fence. I took another walk around the perimeter of the rabbit guard and I didn’t see any obvious entrance point, and nothing else had been eaten.

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