What to do and what not to when if your bunny escapes (outside your house)

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We have one of those live animal traps, I think it's called "have a heart", that we bought a long time ago to try and catch some critter that was getting into our attic and I have thought that it might come in handy if any of our rabbits ever escaped. I would be a little worried though that if they did trip the door that the sound of it slamming shut might scare them to death. I would probably put that out as well as put out food in an open exercise pen or something and still do a search around the house and neighborhood.

Luckily, my rabbits have never escaped. I have carelessly left the door of the exercise pen open a couple of times with the same rabbit, Smokey. Once he was in the garage with the door closed and the other time he was on our deck so he was not out in the open per se. He had a little adventure sniffing around outside the pen, but he was exploring very slowly and cautiously so I just approached him slowly as well and he either went back in the pen by himself or I was able to pick him up.
 
I've had a few accidents in the past... Oren used to be easy to corner thankfully, especially after he lost his full eyesight. Pandora not so much... she used to hide in a big bush and if you went one way, she'd go the other. Thankfully Mattie hasn't escaped so far, although he's tried it a few times!
 
We used to let our rabbits run around the yard when we were out there watching them. One of the times we let them in the front yard to run. Tiger was a crazy 6month-1.5yr old at the time. When it was time to catch them to put them back in their cages, Tiger did not want to go. We tried to catch her with a BIG fishing net. She ran under my neighbors parcked car and would not come out. We ended up having to use a pole to push her out from under there and then net her. It took at least 1 hr to catch her. She was the best rabbit that I have ever known. I really miss her. (My dogs killed her early this year).


Oh my gosh I'm so sorry to hear that... I hope you did something to your dogs. My dogs try to mess with my rabbits and if they do they are getting a can of whup ass..

vanessa
 
I never had any experiences with escaped rabbits. The closest experience to a rabbit escaping was my encounter with what was 99% chance a "throw away" rabbit.

My mother used the flower beds in front of my condo as a vegetable garden. One day she saw a rabbit nibbling away at her vegetable. She told me about the rabbit.

I came out and approached the rabbit. The rabbit didn't make any attempt to escape as I approached, so I picked it( I never checked bunny's sex) up.

The rabbit was a very healthy weight and it seemed very very healthy and active. I brought the rabbit inside my house. This happened around 8 am.

My first thought was that this might have "escaped" from it's owner. I made "found rabbit" paper posters and posted them on around my condo complex.

Around four pm I realized that this rabbit was most likely (99%) a throw away. The time I "caught" the rabbit was in the height of the recession a few years back.

I called animal control and animal control came at seven pm to pick up the rabbit.

That's too bad you didn't keep it. It seems like it had a nice temperment..

Vanessa
 
It simply cannot ever happen here. We are infested with hawks. They stalked my Mini Rexes thru the sliding glass doors so often we have to put up shades.

All Buns are indoors!

Same here... We have red tailed hawks here, owls, feral cats, everything... you name it. The hawks were stalking my smallest chihuahua's one time. I had to go out with a baseball bat to drive the owl away. I had a friend whose Chihuahua was carried off by an Owl before and am not going to have it happen to any of my pets.

Vanessa
 
My family just got a rabbit from another family a week ago and they said to keep him outdoors because he hated being inside and a couple days ago he escaped his cage and we live by an 80 acre yard with coyotes. We have set his food out with treats but he hasn’t come back yet and we are worried. What do we do?
 
I can’t see what more you can do Shadow_Bunny except wait and hope he comes back... good luck and I hope you find him safe and sound xx
 
Set out food for him and maybe a live trap to catch him... the live trap will not hurt him in anyway...
 
You can walk around and see if you find your rabbit and try to catch him, I’ve catch rabbit before and you need to be fast. It was my friends rabbits that ran away which was my rabbits kits, I manage to catch both with my hands with luring and being fast.

Because your rabbit was new to the surrounding it might not be close and find the food. And he dosen’t know the area.

But sometimes they come back after some days as one breeder I know, one of the better show rabbits ran away but after 8 days she found her and her dad manage to catch the rabbit.

I hope you find the your rabbit.
 
Kevin, my minirex, escaped his outdoor run a few days ago. My husband and I slowly herded him back to the pen where my husband lifted it up (open bottom) and he went right back in.
 
Rabbits are prey animals, reacting negatively to any fast motion in their vicinity. I have an escaped rabbit about once a month (total barn count over 100) and they are sometimes very easy to catch, sometimes very challenging.

Step 1: Locate the escapee but do not approach.

Step2: Do your normal work outside, near it, moving slowly. At first, the bunny with always move away. After a while (anything from half an hour to a few days) the rabbit will start to ignore you, thinking you have no interest in it. A more tame bunny will even come up to you while you work, as if to say "Here I am, why aren't you looking at me?" The less docile / socialized rabbits will often just start to hop around you thinking you are not a threat, assuming you have not made any wild attempts to grab it or moved fast around it.

Step 3: When the bunny moves near enough to you, grab it. Often you can move slowly within a safe range to grab the animal with ease after time. A large fishing net can help a LOT with this task.

I fear putting out treats rarely does any good. Sometimes a bowl of their regular food will entice them but you have to remember to let them become accustomed to your presence because I can guarantee the first time they come to the food, they will be looking for an attack.

Some bunnies simply will not let you get close if they can help it. If you can, create a sort of maze near where you have seen them. They will wander in and they you have the advantage.

Hope this helps anybody who has an escaped rabbit. I wish I could guarantee this would work but, I figure it can't hurt.
 
I came home form the vet with a new bunny and there was another bunny on our front lawn--the sprinklers were on next door. I got out of the car and said, "come here Bunny" and she came right to me and let me pick her up. Our neighbor on the next block told me that a friend adopted her when I asked where their rabbit was. I never told them I had her as I knew they had thrown her away. She was a very sweet little dutch girl.
hi larry,-I am sure there are allot of horror stories out there,we humans forget we are of the animal kingdom-and depending on our environment-determines our fate-we are all potenial-throw aways..-just look at the ie.homeless a health epidemic is about to unfold-similar to the black plague of Europe which killed over 20 million humans..history repeating itself on many fronts--may god help us-sincerely james waller joseph r cottontail rip
 
When my rabbit was young he escaped from his hutch and into the garage. The garage door was cracked so that the cat could get in. When I got home I freaked out scared that he was gone for good. We looked around the garage and there he was! He came running straight towards me. Now I check his latches every time after I feed him so it will never happen again.
 
Mine are purely indoor rabbits, though when I lived in a house with a fenced in yard I VERY THROUGHLY rabbit proofed the fence and brought them out occasionally. The trick with closing gaps at the bottom of a fence is to have chicken wire going down, but instead of stopping when it reaches the ground (they can always dig under that), about half a foot of excess should bend into a corner and lay flat on the ground. Rabbits trying to dig under the fence don’t realize that they need to dig half a food back from the fence, rather right at the edge of the fence. And the grass will quickly grow through the wire and nicely hide it.

But I personally am always paranoid of what might happen if my bunnies get away from me while outside. I take Delilah out a lot, because she LOVES meeting people, and Lahi goes out too to the vet and such. What if something happens? How will they be returned to me if they somehow get away? Lahi hates being touched and will run from anyone who looks like they might pick him up, and Delilah loves to be pet but is scared of being lifted, and will run from hands if she’s not in a petting mood. In the hypothetical situation that they’re outside and have gotten away from me, they’re probably scared and even if I’m around won’t neccessarily come toward me. To a certain extent I’ve trained Lahi to see me as a way to get out of a strange and scary situation, he’ll come over to me and reach up to put his paws on me, but that’s no guarantee.

So: before they leave the house, always, they both have y-front harnesses with tags attached that have their names as well as my phone number, same as dogs would. Even when I was just letting them run around in the backyard, they’d have their harnesses on. The tags made some noise that helped me keep track of where they were, and if I needed to grab them in a hurry the harnesses made that easier. If they ever got out, anyone else who found them had a way of returning them to me.

Delilah, who goes out more than Lahi, and doesn’t stay in a carrier when she does, is also microchipped. Tbh the chances of anyone thinking to check a rabbit for a microchip are low, but there is a chance, and therefore I have done it. I once had someone come into the clinic I was working at with a black lab that had no collar, and asked me to check for a microchip. There was none. That dog probably never made it home.

When I bring Delilah out in her stroller to meet people, I also have a leash clipped to her harness as a “safety belt”. She’s never jumped out of the stroller, but in the event that one day she does, I have a way to catch her that doesn’t require me to actually get my hands on her first when she’s potentially scared, in pain, and trying to hide.

In terms of finding rabbits escaped outside... I have seen once, a little cream bunny sitting out in a bush by a sidewalk. He wasn’t scared but when I got too close he hopped away. He’d begun living in a small wooded area behind some houses. I knocked on the door of the house he was in front of and the lady said that she’d seen him around for the past few months, and had been leaving carrots out for him, which was why he was so fond of that bush. She hadn’t known that that cream colour meant he wasn’t a wild rabbit. Based on what I saw of him, and the fact she said there were more, either someone had dumped a bunch of really young baby rabbits, or a pregnant mom who subsequently gave birth. I helped the lady set up a live trap for him and put her in contact with the local rabbit rescue, who wanted to come out and catch the bunnies, but I never heard what happened. Either way... these bunnies had been living outside long enough that there was no catching them by hand.
 
We have two bunnies and a big garden. Today we let the bunnies out when it was a couple of hours until dark. I turned my back for a few seconds and when i turned back one of my bunnies had disappeared, we looked for her for hours and she wasn't to be found anywhere, when it was dark my Mummy wen't out to put some pak chow in the run, in the hope that it would tempt the bunny back over night, she spotted the bunny eating something in the raised bed, she must have been hiding in our giant herb and medicinal plant patch. Our bunnies our quite tame like "apollo" in this thread, that message gave us hope so thank you. So if your bunny is tame and it escapes there is some hope although i feel I must agree with others in this thread, don't let them escape, so everything in your power not to let it happen!
 
We have 2 rabbits that have been coming into our yard to eat. They have become semi tame in that they don't run from us. We are consented that they will be killed so my husband made a big cage for them. One went in and my husband tried to shut the door to catch it. It escaped and ran. Will it return and go back into the cage where it's food will be ?
 
We have 2 rabbits that have been coming into our yard to eat. They have become semi tame in that they don't run from us. We are consented that they will be killed so my husband made a big cage for them. One went in and my husband tried to shut the door to catch it. It escaped and ran. Will it return and go back into the cage where it's food will be ?

Are these domestic rabbits? You are right to be concerned. If coyotes don't get them, the coming summer heat will.

By chance are you anywhere in the Phoenix or surrounding area? If so, I know of a rescue that may help to catch them.
 
I’m currently in an active escape situation right now. My rabbit Max, or Monster, has escaped(definitely not the first time) and is currently hiding underneath my neighbor’s shed. He had been under here for at least an hour now. I’ve got apples at the opening to try to lure him out, but he’s not budging. There is only one exit, which is the one I’m staking out. Any ideas on anything else I can be doing?
 

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