What’s up doc?
A rascally rabbit has been leading residents of the East Village on a wild bunny chase — after it was spotted frolicking among the garbage and rats on Avenue B, where animal lovers are fearing for its safety.
The hare-raising situation began last week, when neighbors noticed the rabbit hopping around in a vacant lot near 13th Street.
They were shocked that the furry woodland creature had found its way to the concrete jungle.
“I saw it last night. He’s a brown, tabby-looking rabbit. He was afraid of people so he might be a feral rabbit. If he’s feral, he has to go to a sanctuary,” said Susan Antini, 74.
“This is definitely not the place [for it],”
The rabbit has proved slipper than Bugs Bunny, however, and has only been spotted roaming during dawn and dusk in recent days.
“It was jaunty. It was charismatic. It was hopping pretty high for a little bunny,” said Ashley Hoffman, a local who was “charmed” when she noticed the tiny creature stirring in the lot around 8 a.m. Monday.
“It’s better than the rodent prophet of Groundhog Day. It’s a sign that spring is coming! Very much needed by all New Yorkers … I hope it brings people joy.”
It could just be the most famous hare from New York’s East Side since Bugs Bunny — whose works include the critically acclaimed 1947 short “A Hare Grows in Manhattan.”
Where the bunny came from is a mystery, but experts from the Wild Bird Fund speculate that the critter is an Eastern cottontail, a wild rabbit native to the Hudson Valley region east of the river.
The creature appears to be the only bunny in the lot — a padlocked NYCHA property. But its prime piece of Manhattan real estate is no happy home, as the rabbit faces danger from rats that live in the area and poisoned rat traps that have been put out for them.
Where the bunny hides during the day is another secret, but Antini theorizes it is burrowing in a hole.
It has also already gained a reputation for emerging promptly in the mornings and evenings to snack on the fresh green shoots and grass, EV Grieve first reported last week.
That exuberant behavior leads experts with the Wild Bird Fund to believe the rabbit is healthy — and that it should be left alone to frolic in the concrete jungle.
But Antini, who has experience saving bunnies from the horrors of Manhattan, hopes to catch it and bring it to a sanctuary.
“I would keep him at home tonight if I get him,” Antini said. “I’m supposed to take him to the ASPCA and then a rabbit rescuer is supposed to come pick him up. If I get him.”
The rescue needs to happen expeditiously, Antini said, voicing concern for the rabbit’s safety amid the hostile environment, citing passing cars, rats, rat poison, poisonous tulip bulbs, and hawks in the vicinity.
“There’s bulb plants and those are definitely toxic to rabbits,” she explained. “Getting run over by a car, getting poisoned, stuff like that, and somebody doing some harm. It will get a home. It will go to a sanctuary or it will get adopted.”
Other neighbors shared Antini’s concerns.
“I’m worried for the rabbit,” 42-year-old cat-sitter Genevieve Arroya also told The Post while walking her dog past the 13th Street lot. “There’s hawks around, and you’ll see pigeon carcasses around, so that’s a concern. The rat poison. That’s a concern. People grabbing it, and I don’t know, thinking it’s a toy. That’s a concern.”
While the rabbit’s appearance — and the subsequent buzz its sighting has created — has made neighborhood life more “interesting,” she admitted, Arroya also lamented the rabbit’s plight as “sad.”
“Someone obviously dumped it,” she speculated, adding she, too, hoped the rabbit would soon be rescued and rehomed by Antini or someone else.
“[The] rabbit needs to get caught. Rabbit needs a home. Rabbit cannot survive out here in the tough streets of New York City.”
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