Reheartrescue, a rabbit rescue out of Salisbury Mills, got the call last week that two domestic rabbits had been abandoned in a park in Monroe, down in southern Orange County by Kiryas Joel. It wasn’t hard to tell that they used to be pets.

“They come up to you,” explained Riki Higgins of the Woodstock Farm Sanctuary. “You know this was a rabbit that was previously cared for because their demeanor is a lot different than wild.”

The park was a known hotspot for abandoned pet rabbits, which can’t survive in the wild. “Unfortunately, rabbit dumping is a pretty frequent occurrence,” Higgins said, for a number of reasons – from breeders getting rid of some of their stock, kids getting bored of their pets, or well-meaning rabbit owners with inadequate fences.

Reheartrescue is in the business of caring for these abandoned rabbits, but they’re running low on space, so they put in a call to the Woodstock Farm Sanctuary, which is celebrating twenty years of caring for rescued farm animals.

Woodstock doesn’t usually get these calls because they only have one rabbit barn, which is limited in space. But one of their rabbits, Sherman, who was rescued from a live-kill market in New York in 2019, lost his companion Leah in the fall, and has been lonely.

They took in the two rescues, black-furred females, and named them Glinda and Elphaba – yes, after Wicked. Higgins says they’re settling in nicely.

Before the temperature dropped, the pair got to “hop around the yard outside, and they really enjoyed that.”

They’re being eased in to hanging around Sherman. The trio spend their days together, but for now are separated at night.

“They’re a lot more confident than some rescue rabbits that I’ve met who come here terrified,” Higgins says. “They were comfortable enough to come up to me.”

Higgins said if you see an animal that you think has been abandoned, to “do your due diligence” first and make sure they’re not actually wild. A call to the SPCA or a local rescue group, she says, should help from there.

When a sanctuary takes in an animal, they’re making a lifetime commitment to the animal’s care, and that can be a costly one. Rabbits can live up to a decade, and are prone to gastrointestinal issues that can require expensive veterinary treatment.

Woodstock has been running a fundraiser to bank enough for lifetime care of the animals, from food and bedding to veterinary emergencies. They’re at around $800 donated on Instagram and $300 more on Facebook, but are still running short. Donations will be matched through the end of the year, making every donated dollar count double.

If you’d like to donate, volunteer, or just look at pictures of the animals at the Woodstock Farm Sanctuary, visit www.woodstocksanctuary.org.