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NEWS ARTICLES Bouncy bunnies hopping for a good home soon
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Bona Tucker, head of Torrance-based PenSave Foundation, tends to a bunny housed with about 300 others after their rescue from a Mar Vista home. We're trying to encourage people to take in a group," Tucker said. |
Want a bunny or two or three – or 400?
Give or take a rabbit, that's how many of the furry, cuddly critters the Torrance-based PetSave Foundation is seeking to place in good homes.
The nonprofit group ended up with the bunch of bunnies after the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Los Angeles raided a Mar Vista home in April where the animals were living in squalor.
Many were diseased or injured as the high rabbit density prompted fights to break out among the usually docile creatures or attracted rats that attacked and fed on them. At least 100 were too sick or injured and had to be destroyed.
Criminal charges are expected to be filed against the home's occupant, an eccentric woman who added to her surreal collection incessantly despite the horrendous conditions.
But meantime the foundation must find new homes for the rabbits, which now have largely been neutered or spayed and nursed back to health.
"You hear 400 and it just doesn't sink in until you see individuals in every cubbyhole," said volunteer Bob Tucker, as he stood in a formerly empty SPCA dog shelter the group is leasing near Culver City, the soothing strains of classical music wafting through the 5,400-square-foot building.
There are about 320 rabbits at the shelter and another 80 elsewhere. About 160 of them were born at the facility, since they kept reproducing in the weeks after they were confiscated.
"When we first brought the babies here," Tucker said, "you waded through them."
Indeed, the place is filled to the brim with bouncing bunnies.
There are white rabbits and black rabbits, gray rabbits and brown rabbits. Rabbits sit in cages, rabbits sprint through large pens and rabbits cuddle up to one another in the gender-segregated enclosures.
"Reactions (from people) range from devastated at how many we have to find homes for to being delighted to have so much choice of every shape and color," said Bona Tucker, the group's president.
Just how long it may take to find homes for Bona's bunnies, no one is sure. It may take awhile though. In the past month only about a dozen have been adopted, while another dozen are pending.
Slowly but surely, the 20 volunteers who staff the shelter are giving names to their charges as they learn about the distinct personalities and characteristics of each.
There's Smoke, a salt-and-pepper gray rabbit. There's Eight-ball, so named for its distinctive white nose. There's Athena, a gray and white rabbit with torn ears. And there's Rex Harrison, a handsome red rabbit with a gray face that looks like a 5 o'clock shadow.
Considering their ordeal, volunteers are surprised by how friendly the rabbits are.
"Do you know why?" said volunteer Lisa Nicolai, a Los Angeles actress. "They're so grateful."
Permanent homes for rabbits aren't the only things the group needs.
They could also use foster parents for those awaiting placement. Drivers to take rabbits to vets. Vets willing to work pro bono. People with a surplus of hay. People willing to donate money. People willing to donate time. And if you want a rabbit, but can't afford the adoption fee, it will be waived if you're willing to volunteer.
In short, if you're breathing, you're needed.
"We've had some dynamic, busy people making time to do this," Bona Tucker said. "People who are vice presidents of a company, business people with lives and they're making time to look after these bunnies."
The estimated cost of looking after so many rabbits: $1,000 a month.
Not surprisingly, the foundation doesn't want to baby-sit bunnies forever.
"We're trying to encourage people to take in a group," Bona Tucker said. "Not one goes out of here with the ability to make more because they're awful cute, but we don't need more."
522 W. 9th St.
San Pedro, CA 90731
Tel: 310-833-7333 contact@petsave.org
