Are you getting your home ready for Easter? If you’re scoping out ideas for Easter gifts, you may get excited about the thought of giving a live rabbit to your child. However, this may not be a good idea.
Giving a bunny as a gift on the day on which a magical gift-giving bunny is featured certainly has its appeal. However, control this impulse as a favour to both your children and to the rabbit that may be chosen as a pet. Instead, why not select from the many wonderful gifts available?
Real Life Bunnies Shouldn’t be Purchased Without Careful Thought
Bunnies are so charming and make such good companions, it is not surprising that they are the third most popular pets in Canada, right behind dogs and cats. It is also not surprising that they are the third most frequently abandoned pets.
Thousands of rabbits are taken to animal shelters right after Easter, the day on which these little creatures are so often given as gifts to children. Even worse, many are abandoned and left to fend for themselves—and that’s bad because these are animals of prey who have no idea how to survive in the wild. In many communities, dumping unwanted rabbits is illegal.
Here is Why a Live Bunny is Not a Good Easter Gift:
1. Rabbits live from 8 to 12 years, and owning one means making a long-term commitment.
2. Young children can’t be left alone with a rabbit because they don’t understand how fragile rabbits are and how easily they can be hurt. Rabbit bones can break and their limbs can become dislocated if these pets are dropped, held too tightly, or jerked around.
3. Rabbits are nervous creatures by nature. Too much noise, activity, and even other family pets can upset them so much that they can have heart attacks! For the same reason, they need to be housed indoors instead of outdoors, because roaming animals outside can frighten them enough even when they are safe inside a cage.
4. Rabbits don’t like being picked up without warning, and they will scratch and hurt a child out of self-defense (especially those who attempt to lift the bunny incorrectly).
5. Rabbits not only need a cage, but they also need to be given space to exercise outside the cage.
6. Rabbits are social animals and need someone—an adult or an older child—to play with them, to litter box train them so they are not creating messes to be cleaned up each day, and to give them the daily, gentle companionship they crave.
7. Bunnies love to chew, and they will chew on almost anything. You need to rabbit-proof play areas for them so they don’t chew your furniture, electrical cords, or anything else that isn’t safe.
8. Rabbits are herbivores and don’t eat meat. Their special diet needs change as they age.
9. Like dogs and cats, rabbits need an annual checkup by a veterinarian and should be spayed or neutered when they mature. They are classified as exotic pets and must be taken to veterinarians who have taken special training to care for them.
Instead of Live Rabbits, Here are Some Great Easter Gift Ideas
Whatever your reasons to celebrate Easter and whether you have a lot or very little money to buy presents, there are plenty of other Easter gifts! You can find them in a great range of prices and at many stores as the holiday approaches.
1. General Gift Suggestions
- You can’t go wrong with stuffed, cuddly little bunnies that come in all sizes, colours, and at every price.
- Chocolate and candied bunnies and eggs—hollow or filled with a variety of yummy centers—are in grocery, candy, and corner stores. You can find candy and chocolate for diabetics as well as dairy-free, gluten-free, and Fair Trade candy.
- ‘Tis the season for outdoor play! Treat your kids with skipping ropes, yo-yos, Frisbees, balls, or kites.
- There are many suitable books for children of all ages to enjoy, such as:
- Guess How Much I Love You – boxed with a cute, stuffed bunny for young children
- The Berenstain Bears and the Easter Story
- Meet the Easter Beagle – and it’s Snoopy, of course!
- Silly putty eggs filled with slime that stretches and bounces.
- A Lego Easter Egg Painting Set is fun for older kids.
- Easter baskets filled with small Easter trinkets, toys, and goodies are always welcome. For children not allowed candy, substitute it with fresh or dried fruit.
- Plastic eggs – you can buy these pre-filled with candy or empty for you to stuff with healthier food choices or with little toys.
2. Easter Experiences:
- Kids love to colour and decorate eggs for Easter! Egg painting kits are inexpensive and available at most grocery stores. Even less expensive are your own cups filled with boiling hot water, 1 teaspoon of vinegar, and 10 drops of food colouring. Using a tablespoon, you can dunk hardboiled eggs into the coloured water and wait for 3 to 5 minutes. For further eggs decorating ideas, search the Internet or your local library.
- Using Easter themed cookie cutters available from the dollar store, cut bunny, egg, and flower shapes from rolled out sugar or shortbread batter. Bake, cool, and have children decorate the cookies with colored icing, chopped nuts, and candied cherries.
- Help children plant seeds or seedlings into pots for indoor windowsill gardening. Eventually they’ll get to see lots of colourful flowers sprouting!
- Visit an animal or bird sanctuary as a family outing on Easter weekend.
- Make an appointment to visit a local animal shelter, so that your children can visit the rabbits and hold one.
- If there is a community-sponsored Easter egg hunt in your area, your children will be welcome to hunt for eggs. Make sure you get there on time! If you have a yard, you can have your own Easter egg hunt. (Don’t forget to keep a little map showing where they have been hidden!)
With so many wonderful gift choices available, you can easily stifle the urge to bestow a live bunny on a child at Easter. Happy Easter, everyone!
Creative Commons Attribution: Permission is granted to repost this article in its entirety with credit to Hastings Veterinary Hospital and a clickable link back to this page.
