The Year of the Rabbit has brought a boom… Report on the heartbreaking scene of “abandoned rabbits” What are the owners’ too selfish arguments?

In 2011, the number of requests for protection doubled. We also receive information every month that rabbits have been abandoned in the city,” says Satoru Asakura, the representative of YU-Usagi, a home for protected rabbits.

The year of the rabbit has rekindled the rabbit boom as the “third pet” after dogs and cats, but the number of “abandoned rabbits” is also increasing rapidly.

A room in a home where a large number of rabbits have collapsed. Rabbits are everywhere on the flooring. After the family took care of the rabbits, seven more rabbits were born.

The photo above shows a room of a family in Saitama City where a large number of rabbits had collapsed. Representative Asakura protected a total of 124 rabbits here.

When rabbits are kept together, they breed very quickly. Rabbits can become pregnant several times a year and give birth to as many as 10 rabbits at a time. Many people mistakenly believe that rabbits are easy to keep because they do not meow like dogs and cats and are inexpensive, costing only a few thousand yen each. It is true that they seldom purr, but when they are dissatisfied or want to complain about something, they do what is called “foot dun,” which is a foot stomping behavior. They also gnaw on the wire mesh of their cages. There were many cases of people who secretly started keeping pets in properties where pets are not allowed, but became unable to ‘take care of them’ because of the noise. There were also owners who said they were fed up with their pets because they didn’t like them.

The places where they were abandoned varied, including parks, riverbeds, and in front of pet stores. Some of the rabbits were seriously injured, with abuse suspected.

Under the Law Concerning the Protection and Management of Animals, a person who abandons a rabbit is subject to imprisonment for up to one year or a fine of up to one million yen. However, there are limitations to the current law, such as the scope of application. We should hasten the development of the law by, for example, giving the Animal Protection Center the authority to protect animals on its own regardless of the owner’s wishes and to ask the court to issue protection orders or sanctions against repeat violators,” said Satoru Fukumoto, attorney at Kisaragi Law Office.

We must not allow irresponsible owners to escape like rabbits any longer.

From the January 5 and 12, 2024 issue of “FRIDAY