What about a rabbit in your garden?

Sunset, June, 1993 by Steven R. Lorton

But newly set out or emerging plants (annuals, perennials, and vegetable seedlings) are prime targets. As one rabbit owner sums up, "Vegetable seedlings and rabbits are an incompatible combination."

To protect seedlings, keep your rabbit in an enclosed pen, put protective fences around areas you want the rabbit to stay out of, or fashion a portable playpen of sorts from 1-by-1 garden stakes and a roll of chicken wire.

Heat and cold. Heat stroke is one of the primary rabbit killers. Rabbits can't stand direct sunlight in their cages. Be certain your rabbit has constant access to shade. Bunnies are happiest in 55|degrees~ to 65|degrees~ temperatures. (At 85|degrees~ they head underground in nature rabbits are not good pets for hot climates.) In hot weather, they must be in a shady place, preferably cool and breezy.

One California rabbit owner wraps a frozen plastic water bottle in a towel and places it in her rabbit's cage in hot weather to cool her pet. Another drapes wet towels over the cage.

Rabbits do well in most cold weather if they have a hiding box to snuggle up in. If you live in a normally mild-winter climate and the temperature suddenly plunges well below freezing, bring the rabbit indoors, or into a garage at least.

Myxomatosis. Well-kept rabbits are relatively disease-free, but in California (especially around coastal hills and Sierra foothills) and in coastal Oregon, domesticated rabbits can contract myxomatosis, which is nearly always fatal. The virus that causes the disease is carried by native pygmy cottontail rabbits and can be transmitted by mosquito. Philip Tillman, campus veterinarian for UC Davis, advises anyone living within 3 miles of a semiwild area with a population of native pygmy cotton-tails to forgo keeping a rabbit as an outdoor pet.