Living with wildlife: Cottontails get close and cozy

By Gary Raham
Nature Writer

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For years our family kept dogs and cats as pets. When they passed away, we didn't replace them. As a result, local rabbits of the eastern cottontail variety (Sylvilagus) decided that our yard made an excellent place to forage and hang out with their buddies and kinfolk.

Consequently, visitors now have to be careful not to trip over rabbits in the yard, and we have to negotiate with them for a share of the garden veggies. They often spend more time lounging in our back yard than we do, seemingly enjoying the view of Long's Peak as they stretch out in the grass.

What's an urban naturalist to do? If they were only cute and fuzzy vagrants that would be one thing, but they do cause damage from time to time, not only to garden produce but also to ornamental greenery.

Colorado can claim three varieties of rabbit: the mountain, desert and eastern cottontails. They all sport somewhat gray-brown fur on top with white bellies, tails and highlights. They weigh in at 2 to 4 pounds and are about 16 inches long.

These cottontails are smaller and more compact than hares like jackrabbits, which are a different sort of hopping bush-chewer. Jackrabbits will sometimes invade yards during times of drought, but cottontail rabbits usually choose urban landscapes on a regular basis.

Their breeding proclivities make even primates jealous. They produce three to four litters of three to five young per year, starting in late winter and proceeding until early fall. Females (does) line football-shaped nests with their belly fur and nurse their young for two to three weeks before sending them off to fend for themselves. Rabbits do not cover North America from sea to shining sea because wild bunnies can expect to live for about 15 months.

If you haven't tripped over a rabbit pretending to be invisible, you may notice their footprints or droppings. They also gnaw off seedlings, leaving a sharp 45-degree angle cut. Though Bugs Bunny is always chomping on a carrot, rabbits actually prefer peas and beans, according to Colorado State University's Dr. Whitney Cranshaw, in a delightful book called "Pests of the West." They also enjoy munching on tulips, fruit tree bark, raspberry bushes and various ornamentals. My wife is amazed that they know the lettuce is ready to eat one day before she does.

Protect plants

Protect young trees by wrapping their bases with a cylinder of hardware cloth. The cylinder should extend 2 to 3 inches into the ground (because bunnies like to dig) and 18 to 20 inches above ground. Fencing a garden with 2-foot high chicken wire keeps them out, as long as you bury the wire a couple of inches deep in the soil.

The state classifies cottontails as game animals, which restricts hunting and trapping to specific seasons and requires a license. Sometimes wildlife agencies grant exemptions when rabbits are damaging property. Various manufacturers make odor repellants to apply to plants during the growing season. Contact or taste repellents like Thiram are best used during a plant's dormant season. Most rabbit repellents, however, are not designed for use on food crops.

Owls, foxes, snakes and hawks find rabbits a tasty addition to their menus. House cats also kill many, and dogs make them feel downright unwelcome. A Colorado Division of Wildlife web site says human hunters kill 50,000 or more during some years.

Yet, like the irrepressible Energizer Bunny of Madison Avenue fame, cottontails manage to reproduce their way into the future quite successfully. Based on fossil evidence, they've been around at least as long as the grass that helps sustain them, which began to spread across North America 30 million years ago during the Oligocene.

Avoid the temptation to buy rabbits as Easter pets unless you want a long-term (up to eight-year) commitment to feed, house and care for them. Domestic rabbits can't survive long in the wild and should be given to animal shelters if they become an unwanted burden.

But as visitors, wild rabbits make pretty tolerable companions in my back yard. In fact, now that the weekly snowfalls have tapered off, I'm thinking of breaking out the lawn chairs and sidling up next to the cottontail that likes to camp out under my Colorado blue spruce. He shouldn't be the only one enjoying the view of Long's Peak.

"Living with wildlife" will continue to look at some of the critters that find backyard co-habitation with humans acceptable. If you've had some experiences with urban wildlife or would like to see a particular creature featured, let us know. Send your comments to GRahamBios@aol.com.