Rabbits

It seems the retirees of Laguna Woods will go to great lengths to save the bunnies--including acts of underground resistance. Few involved will talk about it, but over the last several weeks, a loose coalition of senior citizens--call it the Rabbit Resistance League--has resumed a campaign of purloining poison bait boxes set out for the wild rabbits that have been devouring the landscape at the Leisure World retirement complex.

Successful, micro-targeted neighborhood music festivals have been proliferating — including Make Music Pasadena, the Eagle Rock Music Festival, Venice's Abbott Kinney Music Festival and Echo Park's Culture Collide — and now we can now add "The Nice Stretch of West Hollywood That's West of Fairfax Avenue but East of the Sunset Strip Festival. " Sunday's festival is actually called the Hudson Block Party, and for a second year the classy-casual bar and restaurant that throws it has booked an unexpectedly buzzy bill of local and national acts, including White Rabbits, LP and Haim.

The Easter bunnies are out in force at Long Beach City College. And not in a good way. The college's liberal arts campus, with its large grassy areas, has historically been a dumping ground for people who no longer want their pet rabbits. School officials, saying that they have had enough, are starting a campaign to reduce the number of the furry creatures on campus. But not in a bad way. By the last count, taken several months ago, well over 300 rabbits were on the grounds, digging holes and chewing their way through thousands of dollars' worth of landscaping.

Herman Cain, who at one point was in the lead of the Republican presidential primary, has been trying to land back in the spotlight since dropping out of the race in December. His latest venture, Sick of Stimulus, intended to bring attention to the alleged wasteful excess of President Obama's stimulus packages. Instead, by showing a rabbit being shot out of the air, it ended up attracting the attention ofYouTube's moderators. Sick of Stimulus' ad, simply titled " Rabbit ," puts America's small businesses in the titular role, right before a girl places the rabbit into a catapult and launches it into the air, where it's soon shot to bits.

They were described as "cute little critters" that bring happiness and solace to residents. They were lauded for their playfulness and for being part of the reason some people had moved into the neighborhood. The speakers at the microphone weren't talking about the members of the Seal Beach City Council, although the council members appeared to be fine fellows and four of the five were wearing colorful Hawaiian shirts. The speakers were talking about the rabbits.

[ SYLVILAGUS BACHMANI ] In the late afternoon, about the time bats begin to flit about in the deepening dusk, brush rabbits sally forth from hide-outs located deep in the chaparral of California's coastal mountains and Sierra Nevada foothills. Along trails or meadow edges these small rabbits may be extremely abundant, especially in mid-summer when litters of three to six young venture out for the first time.

Regarding "A Shot for Freedom?" [June 28]: How sad that the writer feels the best way to celebrate Independence Day is to pick up a weapon and kill something. Marge Hackett Ojai Thanks for the story on the upcoming rabbit season. The rabbits are plentiful this year, and many hunters will be enjoying this simple pleasure. Peter Balwan Glendale

Thank you for writing about Dutch rabbits (Pets, April 7). They are truly a joy! We have a steel gray male for a pet. He adds a lot of joy and happiness to our lives. As a matter of fact, we named him Sunshine (Sunny for short) because of the sunshine he adds. As far as I know, however, Dutch rabbits do not have white tails, as indicated in your drawing. I believe that a well-marked Dutch rabbit should have a tail of the dark color. Please tell me if I'm correct in this assumption.

Ferrets have been brought in to clear a cemetery near Salisbury in southern England of a colony of rabbits that burrow under the tombstones and eat mourners' floral wreaths, officials said.

South African authorities are closing Robben Island for two weeks in November to try to get rid of thousands of rabbits that have overrun the island where Nelson Mandela spent 18 years in prison. Robben Island Museum officials said there is no alternative but to implement a "humane culling program" with local animal welfare groups.

Presidents Day 2012 is a day to officially remember our first president , George Washington - cherry tree lore and all. But while we're at it, let's take a look at the lore of a few other American leaders. There's plenty to be found. President Reagan will always be remembered for reaching   an arms-reduction treaty with the Soviet Union and for helping to make it possible for Mikhail Gorbachev to begin restructuring Soviet society. But his unintentionally funny lines are also memorable.

New media join faith, hope and charity as reasons to celebrate this holiday season in two animated Christmas specials — "Hoops & Yoyo Ruin Christmas" and "The Elf on the Shelf: An Elf's Story" — airing Friday on CBS. Nothing says Christmas like a well-executed marketing campaign and I mean that most sincerely. Publicity has long been an American holiday tradition — Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer was created as a Montgomery Ward coloring book before it was set to music and made famous by Gene Autry, who, spurred by the success of that Christmas ditty, went on to make the song "Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town" a hit, and two iconic Christmas specials were born.

What's up, doc? How about the release Tuesday of Warner Home Video's "Looney Tunes Platinum Collection Volume I" on Blu-ray, which features more than 50 of the looniest Looney Tunes cartoons. The set includes such beloved cartoons as "Rabbit of Seville," "What's Opera, Doc?," Duck Amuck," "Tweetie Pie," "For Scent-Imental Reasons," "One Froggy Evening," "Duck Dodgers in the 24th 1/2 Century," "Feed the Kitty" and "I Love to Singa. " And that's not all, folks. There are behind-the "Tunes" featurettes, "Chuck Amuck: The Movie," "The Animated World of Chuck Jones," which features nine cartoons from the amazingly fertile mind of Jones, a "How the Grinch Stole Christmas!

No one is quite sure when the rabbits came. Lore has it that the bunny population at Long Beach City College boomed when the nearby airport broke ground decades ago, causing a population of jackrabbits to relocate to the campus grounds. Two years ago, the population — now mainly abandoned pets — peaked, and more than 300 rabbits competed for food, space and mates on 112 acres. New castaways were attacked by territorial rabbits. Predators found the domesticated rabbits easy prey.

State hospital worker Bruce Schumacher said he was on the verge of retiring and planned to sustain himself with two livestock businesses on his sprawling, 10-acre ranch in the San Bernardino County community of Hesperia. But when he reached his ranch Saturday after a 1,200-acre brush fire roared through his property near the Cajon Pass a day earlier, he met with a ghastly sight. More than 100 of his goats, rabbits and birds were dead, their charred carcasses strewn about his ranch.

Henry Bright endures. His mother raised him in a tiny cabin in West Virginia, eking out a marginal survival; when she died, he was left to bury her. He must do the same for his wife, who dies in childbirth, even as he's mourning her and trying to care for their newborn son. These are just a few of the hardships the 20-year-old Bright has faced: He's not long back from the Great War, as he would call World War I, where he was a foot soldier engaged in...

The article "Senior Citizens Decry Poisoning of Rabbits," (Oct. 20) makes it sound as if most of the Leisure World residents are in favor of the cottontail rabbits that infest our community. However, 300 petitions represent less than 2% of our population. It's another example of the vocal minority getting all the attention. Several months ago we were literally overrun by rabbits. On one particular lawn you could count four of them every evening. There were another three around and about my house.

As Easter weekend approaches, bunnies are in peril in some Orange County communities, according to a lawsuit filed Thursday by two animal rights groups. The Animal Protection Institute and In Defense of Animals are suing the state Department of Fish and Game, saying the agency failed to enforce a state law that says wild rabbits may not be poisoned.

Steady exposure to the electromagnetic radiation given off by cellphones during use may disrupt fetal development, disturb memory and weaken the barrier that protects the brain from environmental toxins, says a welter of new research being presented this week in Istanbul, Turkey. The authors of the studies, published in the past two years, highly preliminary and conducted on rabbits, mice and rats, suggested that the non-ionizing radiation emitted by cellphones and the base stations that broadcast cellphone signals may fundamentally damage cells by means other than the heat that they generate.