How do YOU tell it's rabbit trouble? What do you do?

[Janet Macunovich 32]

No sense waiting for the season to begin, since the rabbits are out there, hungry, and will beat us to it once again. So two questons worth talking about. No answer too elementary, no rabbit-fighter too new, we all think "Everyone else must have thought of this already," but it isn't so!

 

1) How do you know when it's rabbits messing with your plantings?

Us, we look for the very clean cuts they make when they chew, and for their droppings. But we've sure been fooled.

 

2) What do you do to stop them?

• We swear by low fences of small wire. (Rabbit hutch wire. A baby bunnies and its ravenous appetite can fit right through chicken wire.) However, extreme hunger does create superbeings. G.M. called us one evening to report, "Okay, so I tried your fences and I swear I am watching them right now climb over into my beans! I'm getting a gun!"

• Ingenious and kinda pretty answer in Green Thumbs Down (Live Wood Dang Rabbit).

[Your Letters 2]

Tell me this is rabbit dung, okay? Because I don't want it to be rats! I've never seen it before but this year it's all over the place. - J -

[Janet Macunovich 32]

Not rats. It's from a/some bunnies. Rat scat is longer than wide, and bigger than rabbit turds, 1/2" to 3/4" long rather than 3/8" round. Deer droppings can look like rabbit droppings but the amount's usually greater, the pellets more oval and larger.

 

Couple of sites with animal sign help, one from Florida Extension, the other from University of Michigan's kid-pages:

 

http://hcgreenthumb.wordpress.com/tag/rat/

http://www.biokids.umich.edu/guides/tracks_and_sign/leavebehind/scat/

[juliahofley 0]

Here's a photo of deer droppings I took in my yard this morning.
Deer droppings are a little more oval and sometimes clumped where rabbit droppings are usually round, not clumped, with a consistency more like sawdust pellets. Size is also different for deer based on fawn, doe or buck.
I spend a lot of time watching the behavior of deer and rabbits in our yard. Other gardeners who have stopped by have mentioned how easy it is to watch them up close because of the site lines from our windows. You usually don't get to see them this close from so many perspectives and times of day and night. It's helped me learn a lot about how to garden successfully with our active browsing community.

[Margaret Thele 16]

Poop pics!

[Lee 1]

We live in downtown Plymouth and are PLAGUED(!!) by rabbits, woodchucks, skunks, and raccoons. We have to do a weekly check for burrowing around our porch, and have had to have have-a-heart traps place several times.  I was just outside sorrowfully gazing at a vibernum that has been reduced to stubs, with the bark all gnawed off...I grow quite a few clematis and almost never need to prune in the spring--the stems have all been gnawed off at ground level.  I love lillies ,but getting flowers has turned into a battle.  I'm ready to get a gun...

[Dsmith74 16]

When I was a kid, for a while Mom and Dad had a vegetable garden. We lived in a suburban neighborhood with mostly fenced back yards (perfect for rabbits). I still relate the smell of talcum powder with storms, because after the storm was over Mom would go out with a bottle of baby powder and dust the beans and stuff to keep the rabbits from wiping them out in a single night. In the still, moist air the smell of that powder would permeate the whole back yard.