Rabbit Problem?

And not to mention the aliens, right?
But seriously, you might find some good tips here – I like the last suggestion, just keep enough veggies and fruits for them and you :)

Attack squirrels!

home made pipe-bomb down the rabbit hole is a pretty powerfull solution

I can’t feed the rabbits because there’s thousands of them. Are there any good websites on training squirrels to attack? There are some good bomb recipes in the book “Still Life With Woodpecker” by Tom Robbins. So fox urine doesn’t work?

I’m assuming you’ve already tried shooting and eating them, right? But I guess that’d be a pretty unvaried diet if there’s thousands of them….

well, i think the best pipe bomb recipes are in the anarchist’s cookbook, oh, you could make napalm and burn them out

Capturing and either eating or releasing downtown was a thought for a minute until I considered pipe bombs and attack squirrels.

well, you could also borrow someone’s aggressive doberman pincher for the weekend, that would work too

attack squirrels

i have a doberman pincher! you can borrow her, but im not so sure she would fit very far into the rabbit hole, shes a chubby girl

You can email Alejandro Jodorowsky and ask him how so many rabbits were slain in El Topo. Perhaps there was a flute involved. Now that’s an idea; go Pied Piper on them.

If I stocked the yard with tame male carniverous rabbits, could I alter the gene pool of the wild rabbit population to prefer squirrels over vegetables? Hmmmm… are rabbits sensitive to ultrasonic noise?

You’d actually prefer to be overrun by carniverous rabbits, rather than vegetarian ones?
It’d make for a good B horror movie: “The attack of the flesh eating bunnies”

The carniverous rabbits would be tame, having been raised on cat food. They would pose no threat to human life or limb. Hormone additives in the cat food would inspire them to mate with all female rabbits. The tame rabbits would all have white fur so that the wild offspring could be easily identified.

Could chubby dobermans be trained to deliver pipe bombs to all rabbit holes?

But would the wild offspring not inherit the carniverous tendencies from their tame fathers (who are pretty fly for a white….rabbit)?

she could just chase them away from the garden area i guess, shes pretty spry

but dont count on her sitting on command she never mastered the art of that one

hey what about setting up some twinkle lights around your garden and maybe even going thru it, maybe they would mistake the light movement for people and not go near it. or getting a little tape recorder and setting it up in the middle of your garden and have the volume up all the way, with some random sounds like a garbage disposal and a dog bark, the loud random sound might scare the hell out of them lmao i would love to see that

You can cover your garden in cheesecloth. I know this stops birds, but rabbits might bite through it. Just a thought…

better yet…..just cover it with cheese. That way on a particularly hot summer day, you’ll have a very unique cheese-fondue experience!

They say spreading used coffee grounds around will repel cats. If rabbits are sensitive to ultrasonic sounds, I could get one of those pest repellents that blasts ultrasonic noise that only rabbits can hear. This might actually work as they say not to use the sound generator if you have Gerbils. Squirrels might be affected though…

back in the day (like 3 years ago) i had a guinnea pig and i had one of those ultrasonic sound plugins in my room and it didnt seem to bother him at all

Was it an Attack Guinnea Pig?

The rabbit B movie has been made already. Anyone else remember The Day of the Lagamorphs? (Which used guinea pig vocalizations as sound effects, by the way.)

The only way my Dad dealt with rabbits in his garden when I was a kid was to put chicken wire along the bottom of our fence and bury the bottom, curled out toward the rabbits. That way, when they dug, they hit the “floor” of chicken wire and couldn’t get past it.

unfortunatly no, it was a very lazy guinnea pig. i did have an attack hampster when i was 10, it would have been badass if he had attacked anyone other than me

watch this squirrel

Human hair clippings from the local hair salon sprinkled around a yard is a great way to keep out bunnies.

Back to the question; try the large Havaharts. Buy more than one and relocate far, far away. Behaps get all of your friends to help..Rabbits multiply alarmingly fast. Human hair, human urine, human feces do nothing to keep out animal life. (I have tried – both male and female.) However, I am told that the major zoos sell tiger patties (Zoo doo) thru the mail. So unless you have a BIG cat, you might try that.

Otherwise, you have to install a fence that extends two feet below the ground. (See @syz).And remember, Nature always wins, so take a Zen attitude.

Rent some ferrets. Pay the owner in vegetables and rabbit meat.

Following cheebdragon’s lead… gas ‘em!

.22 caliber pellet gun

Much quieter than an actual .22 firearm but it will definitely take care of rabbits. Unless you wanna go the humane route, that is.

Before you get rid of them, make sure they are wild! True story: I lived in Chile for a while, and the family I lived with had a similar problem to what you’re describing. They tried everything, and couldn’t stop the rabbit from destroying their garden. Eventually the aunt killed the rabbit…and made a rabbit stew. The next day the neighbors came knocking on their door: “Has anyone seen our pet rabbit?”

I always follow what Bill Murray does. You can try the flooding technique, C4, or use a high powered rifle.

Since I can’t constantly guard the yard or hire an armed guard, they’ll sneak in when I’m gone. If I go with your idea of a Havahart motion-detection water sprayed system gailcalled, I wonder if it will detect the smaller rabbits. I hope I’m not doomed to a Bill Murray life, shilolo! The only other effective option seems to be a huge excavation project to bury chicken wire or to go with my original plan of burying barbed wire and scalpuls. Can anyone think outside the box on this one?

you really can’t get a barn cat? It seems like it could feed itself

Good idea! The thought of an outdoor cat originally did cross my mind 3 months ago. The cat needs to stay out of the house though, if at all possible. How can I get the cat to survive outside if it’s 20 degrees? What about the occasional snow & ice in Nevada? Will my Barn Cat attack a rabbit if the rabbit is bigger than the cat? Most of these rabbits are bigger than cats.

Forget the cat, go with a vicious dog, the Dachshund. It turns out that they were bred to hunt rabbit (I kid you not). They are long and sleek, a shape well suited to digging and entering burrows. Importantly, I can vouch for their reported rabbit hunting prowess (see below).

WARNING, WARNING, WARNING, rabbit lovers beware

My parents got a Dachshund when I went to college. One time when I was home, it was playing in the yard and came back with something in its mouth. To our surprise, it had found a rabbit burrow, and captured a baby rabbit. Before we could rescue the poor rabbit, our dog literally swallowed it whole. After that, we saw no more rabbits at my parents’ house…

Of course, if that doesn’t work, you can always hire a professional.

Cool, shilolo, interesting. The daschund might do the trick. Would a male or a female be better at catching rabbits? Would the dog annoy the neighbors with alot of noise if it were left in the backyard while noone was home? The links you posted say they’re alert & bark in response to what they might think is an intruder. Got any ideas for a good name for the dog?

Don’t know about the sex thing, but everyone knows that females are more vicious…. (Donning flame-retardant suit).

For what its worth (I hate anecdotal evidence), my parents’ dog was a female named Alex. I don’t remember her making more noise than the average dog, but this was years ago. As far as names go, may I humbly suggest shilolo? ;-)

Sounds like a great question for Fluther. What should I name my new rabbit-hunting Dachshund?

I first thought to name the dog after a local hot dog joint. My next thought was to name the dog “shilolo” if you weren’t offended. Thought it would be OK because I’d be honored if someone named their pet “psyla”. The question has been posed to Fluther! Thanks, shilolo!

What you really need is one of these. It lives off of Monster brand energy drinks.

True, but the Alien Whiskey Eye needs to be moved a bit forward, towards the tip of the beak, for it to be more believeable and fearsome to rabbits.

How’s this? Better?

Excellent. Much improved. Eerily unsettling. A nightmare of a beak.

That was the one in the reflection. What should I name it?

I would call it “The Finger of Set”. It’s very unsettling to refer to a beak as a “finger”.

Very nice

wildflower was just in “Who will be the next big thing on Fluther” and is going over to “What should I name my new rabbit-hunting Dashund”.

Wildflower is the new big thing, right?

Oi, what are you saying about my size??

The size of what?

Grandest thing, sorry. I like your new “Oi” thing. Reminds of these days.

My comment was drunken and needed to be moderated. Why did shrubbery refer to people as things?

That’s better, but now I’ll just get a big head…......Punk FTW! :)

btw, did you know Hello Kitty was invented in England, but the Japanese kind of adopted it. If they hadn’t, today it might be called ‘Oi Cat’....

NO WAY! Are you serious? I love that tidbit.

It’s what Jonathan Ross said in Japanorama – it’s funny :)

Awesome…

I’m such a Japanophile.

That series is the best – this was my favorite episode…...I’m still baffled!

Punk Rock and Hello Kitty in the same thoughtstream. Hmmmmm…. My mind just stopped.

Yup, gotta love Japanese culture…..there is something very appealing about a really cute, mostly pink, crazy punk outfit….

Name the dachshund “Fang.” We had one when I was young and it came with the name, Hagen, who was apparently the knight in Die Gotterdamerung.

Great suggestion Gail. Fang=Catch :)

omg dachshunds are major barkers! My grandparents have had 3 because my grandpas brother breeds dachshunds, everytime I go to my grandparents house or my great uncles house I have to listen to at least 10 min of barking! If you step outside for a second you have to hear another 10min of barking when you come back inside! They will bark at anything that sounds like knocking, and doorbells on tv make them bark also.

I’m afraid most of the dachshunds that I see on a regular basis are obese (it’s quite unusual to see a fit dachshund over a year old). Rather cuts down on their ability to catch rabbits and squeeze into burrows (which is why they have that odd shape).

syz is so right! They do get fat, and sometimes they are so fat that they have no hair on their stomachs because of it rubbing off on the ground.

And they also get herniated discs, for the obvious reasons.

they can break their backs really easy also. I don’t think they should be kept outside at night, they are lap dogs or at least all the ones I have seen are.

cheeb, I could tolerate 9 minutes of barking, but the tenth minute would drive me up the wall. I’m glad you mentioned that cheeb. The links from shilolo suggest Daschunds are good guard dogs. This might not be a good thing. The neighbors would have a cow if it was too good of a guard dog. I wonder if your grandparents Dashunds fed off each other (like codependents) & made more racket because they were in a group. Would a lone dog be quieter?

NO.

I’m telling you Psyla, get a big-ass barn cat, problem solved.

they started with just 1 dachshund and then like a year before the #1 died they got #2, then they decided that #2 was lonely without #1 so they bought #3 (who has the same markings as #1 did…..).
I guess that its possible that #1 started the whole barking thing and #2 picked up the habit also and then #3 learned from #2.

that was all very confusing to write and probably even more confusing to read….....sorry!

Thanks, I’ve been warned! Maybe a Daschund is not a good idea, but will a Cat run off the rabbits? I like cats better than dogs, really. Cats aren’t so attention-seeking. A cat would probably dash free first time I opened the fence gate. Any dog will probably scour out the rabbits, maybe doesn’t have to be a Daschund. I don’t want to lug big bags of chow every week….

I think that if you added up all the money that it cost to feed a dog or a cat for the rest of its life, it might end up being cheaper to just get a green house….
Maybe?

True! But I got gardens scattered all over. I was talking to a guy today who said he wraps his garden in “rabbit net” (whatever that is), but that’s got to be ugly! You’re right though, the cost of chow would more than make up for the back-cracking labor that I don’t look forward to of burying chicken wire all along the fence.

NY Times

Go to your local government’s website, because a lot of the solutions people are offering might be illegal in your region. Hopefully they’ll also offer ideas for you.