Our neighbors share a rabbit with us. The rabbit is a female eastern cottontail. Female cottontails have a home territory that is just about the size of our neighbor’s and our yards put together. From time to time, males come to visit. Of course, 28 days after his visit she gives birth to a half dozen little bunnies. Shortly thereafter another male, or the same one, comes visiting again, and 28 days later another litter. This can happen seven times through the year hence the promiscuous reputation of rabbits.

Rabbits are native to every continent except Australia and Antarctica. However, we just can’t seem to leave Mother Nature to herself so in 1859 Thomas Austin imported 13 European rabbits and released them in Australia. He had hunted them in England and wanted some to hunt in his new home. He got his wish. In 1866, just seven years later, he bagged 14,000 of the “hoppers” on his land.

Rabbits soon became a problem. In 1901 Australia attempted to contain the rabbits to the east by building three fences across the continent that together exceeded 2,000 miles in length. It didn’t work. In the 1950’s they released a virus into the population and initially it worked cutting the over 300 million rabbit population in half. However, as Darwin predicted, the rabbits quickly developed immunity to the virus, and by 1990 the rabbit population was once again over 300 million!

Here in Nebraska we not only have imported domestic rabbits, we have three native species of cottontails and two native species of jackrabbits. While all three kinds are Lagomorphs, the phylogenetic order for the rabbits and hares, and while they do resemble each other, genetically they are very different.

The domesticated rabbits are descendants of the European rabbit. These were originally found in Spain and domesticated as a food animal 3,000 years ago. They are still raised as food animals today in Europe and specifically in the Czech Republic where, according to one source, they eat over 100,000 pounds of rabbit meat each year. Other countries that raise rabbits for food are China, France, Italy, Spain, and England.

Until beef became relatively cheap in the 1960’s, rabbit was a common food here in the U.S. The meat is low in fat and high in protein and rabbit can replace chicken in just about any and all recipes…even fried “chicken”. Fried rabbit is excellent! Cindy once had a student who raised them and he would kill and clean a couple and give them to her. I miss those days!

You can also kill and eat our “bunnies”. They are considered a game species and the hunting season is from September through February. You do want to be careful when skinning them, however. Rabbits can carry tularemia, a bacterial infection that can be transmitted to humans, so it is recommended you wear gloves while skinning them.

Rabbits hop, and they do so with some impressive speed. A cottontail rabbit can hop up to 18 miles/hour for about ½ mile. Jackrabbits are more than twice that fast! Imagine racing the fastest human against a jackrabbit in an 800-meter run. The jackrabbit would be finished before the human completed his first lap!

Our rabbit doesn’t have to be that fast. The dog doesn’t chase her anymore, and the rabbit will just sit in the shade and look at the dog. They’ve raced enough times that both the dog and the rabbit know who will win that race!