Pet feature: Bundle of bunnies

Russ Dillingham/Sun Journal

Tammy Ray found a variety of types and sizes of rabbits abandoned in a field recently.

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- Russ Dillingham/Sun Journal

Russ Dillingham/Sun Journal

Tammy Ray gives a big hug and kiss to one of the rabbits she rescued from a field near her house in Lisbon. They were all very young, including this Flemish Giant she named Taffy, who will get as big as a medium sized dog when fully grown.

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- Russ Dillingham/Sun Journal

Russ Dillingham/Sun Journal

Tammy Ray's son's dog Yukon peeks over the makeshift wall keeping her rescued rabbits contained in her boyfriend's garage in Lisbon. She found them in a field recently. She uses the folding tables not only to keep them corralled, but to separate males and females.

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- Russ Dillingham/Sun Journal

It was a little white dot that caught Tammy Ray's attention first.

She'd always looked for deer grazing in her boyfriend's field as she drove by on her way to his Lisbon home. On this Friday evening there were no deer. Just the curious white dot. Ray thought it might be trash.

"Then I saw the bunny ears moving," she said. 

One bunny, Ray figured. But as she got out of her car and walked into the field, it was a herd that greeted her.

"They were all hopping toward me," she said.

Eleven pet rabbits, all young and skinny. The body of a 12th lay in the area. Also nearby: recent tire tracks.

Someone had dumped a dozen baby bunnies in the field.

"That's when I realized I couldn't leave them there," she said.

Ray spent the next half hour gathering up the rabbits and putting them in her car. When it got too dark to see, she called her boyfriend and they searched the field together with flashlights. Because the area is home to an eagle, fisher cats and coyotes, Ray doubted the rabbits would make it through the night outside.

They captured 10 of the 11. One small black rabbit got away.

Ray and her boyfriend knew how to care for cats and dogs. They had no idea what to do with rabbits. 

"That's when it hit me," Ray said. 

She now had 10 rabbits to care for. 

Using folding tables as barricades, Ray and her boyfriend set up a makeshift bunny pen in the garage, then divided the pen in two when they realized they had both males and females. Ray thought rabbits liked apples — a theory supported when one of the rabbits snuck into a bag of apples she had in the back of her car and began devouring them — and so she fed them those overnight. She went online to find out what else to feed them, how to take care of them. 

"It's like coming home with eight kids and no nannies," she said.

Ray found help from rabbit Web sites and a local rabbit breeder who came to the garage. The breeder guessed that Ray's rabbits ranged in age from 8 weeks to 6 months old and represented several different breeds, including mini lop, lionhead and one of the giant breeds. She suggested vet care for two that appeared to have infections. 

Ray quickly bonded with the bunnies, who liked to hop into her lap and nudge her for attention or food. She named them Deer, Floppy, Dusty, Angel, Blondie, Misty, Midnight, L.B., Taffy and Mr. Man (though he would turn out to be a she). Ray briefly — very briefly — considered keeping all 10. Then she considered keeping two.

After 10 days of caring for adorable-but-lots-of-work rabbits, she's now debating whether to keep any. But whether she keeps one or two or none, Ray wants the others to have good homes.

Deer was adopted through the vet's office that treated her for an ear infection, leaving Ray with nine. Other people have offered to take a couple, but they said the rabbits would have to live outside, and that's not the kind of life Ray wants for her bunnies. She could also bring them to an animal shelter — two have agreed to take them — but Ray feels responsible for them.

"I kind of feel bad," she said. "I kind of feel like they got the short end of the stick somewhere."

Ray now has the rabbits set up in an area covered with shavings. She makes sure they always have clean bedding, fresh water, pellets and hay. She gives them sunflower seeds one day, apples the next. The rabbits have space to hop, companions to play with and a human who loves them. Ray wants them to have that same kind of care in permanent homes.

She's still appalled that someone left them in a field to die. She wants that person to know that the rabbits didn't have to be abandoned, that local animal shelters would have taken them in.

And she wants any potential adoptive families to know she has nine baby bunnies who could use safe, loving, indoor homes.

"I know these rabbits aren't any different than anybody else's," she said. "But they're pretty special." 

Have an idea for a pet feature? Contact Lindsay Tice at 689-2854 or e-mail her at ltice@sunjournal.com