[Sparticus]

sadly, they can also bring home trophies of headless cottontails (who usually are great at wiping out one's vegetable garden or fall display garden)!

Sadly?? What's so sad about that? Those flop eared monsters have been digging their holes in the roots of my poor young fruit trees and helping themselves to my vegetables all summer!! I wish my useless cat would go catch a wheelbarrow load.

Signed, Mr. MacGregor

notice the lack of any sarcasm tag here...

[thubb]

lol sorry...it's just that the ones my calico's brought home have been babies. i can empathize with you, however. i live rurally but my mom lives 'in town' (which is still rural). every spring she'd spend hundreds of dollars at the nursery only to find all her pretty things ravaged by peter cotton tail and friends. i don't yet have a garden as i'm concentrating on readying my donkeys for breeding next year. i have 3 sicilian jennies and a jack.

i guess i'm still a softy at heart for the cute and cuddly looking. note, i said 'looking'. i had a pet rabbit a few years ago. she went 'adios' after going 'apey' & attacking me twice and lunging at my then-toddlers. the trophies my cat's brought home have either been laid upon my doorstep or under the wheels of my truck where i can't see them. it's usually upon my return home that i find the evidence of the kill in the driveway....but i've been the one responsible for some of the 'mutilations' ...i.e. squooshed guts & brain matter. not a pleasant site when you're about to prepare steak and mashed potatoes, you know.

[reformedliberal]

Find a beagle/hound mix. When we had one, we had no rabbits. But we had moles. The Akita gets rid of the moles, but finds possums more fun that rabbits, unless he can find a nest of baby bunnies. However, he does a great job of keeping the deer away from the lilies and tomatoes.

Beagles love to chase rabbits, they fixate on the scent and it is fun to watch them zig and zag exactly on the rabbit trail. Then they find them and eat them! The trick is to keep them from getting too fat to chase rabbits.

And I sympathize: I had a 5-year old ornamental vine destroyed at the roots by the nasty beasts. They leave a pile of identifiable droppings, so there was no mistaking the culprit. We need another beagle.