Please don’t send any more feral rabbits to Coombs. Their safety simply cannot be guaranteed.
Some 20 rabbits were stomped or crushed to death last month — the news of which has only recently come out. These are the rabbits taken from the grounds of the University of Victoria not long ago, and brought to Coombs to be spayed or neutered, and to live out the rest of their natural lives.
That wasn’t quick enough for someone, who broke into the enclosure and killed a bunch of the animals there.
It’s a disgraceful act that, should the person(s) responsible be caught, needs to be punished to the fullest extent of the law — with years of psychotherapy thrown in for good measure.
The presence of the rabbits has in itself been controversial. They broke out of their enclosure not long ago, enraging a neighbour with a farm, who — on the advice of the province — hired a contractor to kill those rabbits on their property. That simply made rabbit rage the status-quo.
The goal of the rabbits’ caretaker, Susan Vickery, is to ensure they have a safe, secure place to live. After all, it’s not the rabbits’ fault.
Some people would rather see them dead, calling them vermin and pests.
That’s not really the point of Vickery’s exercise. Most people would rather they live out their natural lives and not be subjected to cruelty. Fair enough, but it is also cruelty to allow non-native species of animals to impact the local environment. From these rabbits to bullfrogs and more, it’s human interference that has led to these creature discomforts.
The work of Vickery is only one way to let people — who started this mess to begin with — show a little compassion and make things right again.
The actions of people to hasten the rabbits’ demise, is simply ignorant cruelty that deserves our scorn.
