text: It's believed the rabbits are the prolific progeny of a few European hares that escaped from the fairgrounds decades ago. (Photo: KING) 
   
   The shores of Langley on Whidbey Island are under siege. The earth riddled with holes, and more. The problem is so bad, kids at Langley Middle School have to be on the lookout for tiny landmines whenever they go out for PE. 
   
   "There is feces everywhere and there are some illnesses that can be carried and transmitted," said Brian Miller. Facilities Director for the South Whidbey School District. "Every day there are new holes, and the ones we've filled in are dug out, again." 
   
   But the culprits aren't gophers or moles or even rats. 
   
   They're bunnies. 
   
   Yes, bunnies. Adorable, fluffy, long eared bunnies. Hundreds of them. All over town. 
   
   "They are cute, but they have an impact on our community," said Miller. 
   
   Countless wild rabbits are digging up the middle school football field that the district just paid $80,000 to restore. They're destroying the foundations of buildings at the Island County Fairgrounds, and posing health risks to people and pets. The critters have found a safe shelter in the city, away from predators. Some people feed them and there are plenty of buildings under which to burrow. 
   
   It's believed they are the prolific progeny of a few European hares that escaped from the fairgrounds decades ago. They've lived in relative harmony, until now. 
   
   "Everybody is saying we've never seen it like this before," said Miller. 
   
   If anyone should have a wild hare over the rabbits it's Babs Small. 
   
   They were breeding like, well, like bunnies under her shed last year. About 100 babies were born. 
   
   "We would watch them instead of watching TV," she said. 
   
   Everything from relocation to releasing raptors to eat them is being considered. Babs, however, says people should just do what she did after the shed incident. She is now keeping the rabbits from nesting by installing pavers and chicken wire around potential breeding grounds. That, along with not feeding them, would force the bunnies back into the forests where predators and nature can take their course. 
   
   "I would just prefer a more natural solution than extinction, than trying to just exterminate them," she said. 
   
   The middle school has taken some of those measures, but dozens of bunnies still hop all across campus every day. The district is now considering spending $60,000 to fence the property off. 
   
   A community meeting is scheduled for October 7 to discuss how to handle the problem. Whatever decision is made, everyone in Langley is simply hoping it doesn't lead them further down the proverbial rabbit hole. 
   
   Read or Share this story: http://www.king5.com/story/news/local/2015/09/16/langley-overrun--rabbits/32527853/ ||||| Fran Johnson scowls at a pair of bunnies in a Langley neighbor’s yard. The longtime resident was sorely miffed with rabbits for devastating her recently landscaped yard. 
   
   Worried that a mass culling or relocation of Langley’s abundant rabbit population would be political suicide, Mayor Fred McCarthy has decided to let the bunnies be. 
   
   Despite fielding several complaints about the booming bunny population in Langley, the city will not hire a trapper or authorize the slaying of rabbits under McCarthy’s governance. 
   
   “I don’t think we’re going to get into the business of trapping and euthanizing rabbits,” McCarthy said. “I don’t think that would go over well in Langley.” 
   
   Residents are split on their opinions of the furry critters. Some have taken to feeding and sheltering the big-eared bunnies, which in Langley are largely a combination of semi-wild/feral rabbits or hares and non-native eastern cottontail rabbits, according to Russell Link with the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. 
   
   Other Langley folk, such as Fran Johnson, are fed up with losing their gardens and landscaping to the voracious herbivores. At her home, a recently landscaped slope in her backyard is pockmarked with holes dug by rabbits scrounging up young plants. Johnson pointed out several shrubs and trees, many of them well withered when they should be leafy or covered in needles, that she will have to replace. She estimated the damage to be around $300, nearly half of the cost to have the whole area landscaped last year. 
   
   “I’m not going to plant anything,” Johnson said. “It’s a waste of money. They come in and eat everything right to the ground.” 
   
   Out in her front yard, she points out a circle planter that is just beauty bark, dirt and a stone bird bath. Once it was filled with vegetation, even a corner for cabbage, which unsurprisingly did not survive a bunny’s appetite. 
   
   “I had some stuff in there,” she said. “Now it’s gone.” 
   
   Some residents expressed fears about coyotes preying on the rabbits in Langley, which would eventually move on to household pets. A request on The Record’s Facebook page for any stories of losing pets to coyotes or noticing an increase in coyotes was met with little comment other than request to leave the bunnies alone. 
   
   Dave Marks, Langley’s police chief, said he has not responded to any calls about coyotes attacking pets. He did notice an anecdotal increase in sightings, saying he spotted one in December near the Langley fire station, even taking video of it. 
   
   “They are pretty good size,” Marks said of his coyote sightings. “But I don’t know how you prove that they’re coming into town because of the rabbits or not. There have always been coyotes around.” 
   
   “Cats do vanish quite a bit, but it’s hard to say if it’s raccoons or eagles,” he added. 
   
   Rabbits became such a nuisance for one resident that he ended up shooting them with an air-powered gun. That led to a citation by the Langley Police Department and a criminal charge, Marks confirmed, because it violated the ban on discharging a firearm in city limits. 
   
   Trapping and hunting rabbits is a more complicated series of rules. According to the Department of Fish and Wildlife’s website, “Living With Wildlife,” the best way to sort it out is to contact a local wildlife office for the most recent legal status and restrictions. Three species — Nuttall’s cottontail rabbit, Eastern cottontail rabbit and snowshoe hare — are classified as game and require a hunting license and an open season. 
   
   Domestic rabbits, the kind most often spotted in Langley, are unclassified and may be trapped or killed year-round without a permit. Trapping device restrictions still apply. 
   
   But just because it’s legal, doesn’t mean it will be popular, and that includes Langley police. 
   
   “I’m not into killing animals for no reason,” Marks said. ||||| Play Facebook 
   
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   Embed Bunnies Have Town Hopping Mad 1:53 autoplay autoplay Copy this code to your website or blog 
   
   A horde of wild bunnies have left one city in Washington hopping mad. 
   
   Hundreds of bunnies are running wild around Langley, on Whidbey Island. They're burrowing holes in school football fields, destroying the foundations of buildings and posing health risks to people and their pets, according to local officials. 
   
   "There is feces everywhere and there are some illnesses that can be carried and transmitted," Brian Miller, facilities director for the South Whidbey School District, told NBC affiliate KING 5. 
   
   The bunnies are even digging up a middle school football field that the district just spent $80,000 to restore. 
   
   "Every day there are new holes, and the ones we've filled in are dug out, again," Miller said. 
   
   The fuzzy scourge is believed to be the progeny of European hares that escaped from the Island County Fairgrounds decades ago, according to the station. 
   
   But the bunnies have found a safe haven in the city of Langley, where some residents feed them and there are buildings under which they can burrow, away from natural predators. 
   
   "Everybody is saying we've never seen it like this before," Miller said. 
   
   A community meeting is scheduled for Oct. 7 to address the city's rabbit problem. 
   
   Langley is considering everything from relocating the creatures to releasing raptors to control the population, according to KING 5, and the school district is now considering $60,000 in protective fencing. 
   
   "They are cute, but they have an impact on our community," Miller said.
target: – Apparently the rabbits on Washington state's Whidbey Island are going at it like, well, rabbits. The population in the town of Langley, home to barely more than 1,000 humans, is now numbering into the hundreds, reports NBC News, with residents saying "we've never seen it like this before." Many locals believe that the bunnies are descended from European hares that fled the Island County Fairgrounds decades ago. And while they may be cute, it's getting gross. "There is feces everywhere and there are some illnesses that can be carried and transmitted," Brian Miller, facilities director for the South Whidbey School District, tells KING 5. And the rabbits are burrowing so furiously that they've pockmarked the middle school football field and are destroying the foundations of buildings. "Every day there are new holes, and the ones we've filled in are dug out again," says Miller of the football field, which the district just spent $80,000 restoring. Though the mayor in January indicated the town would let the bunnies be ("I don't think we're going to get into the business of trapping and euthanizing rabbits," said Mayor Fred McCarthy per the South Whidbey Record), an Oct. 7 meeting has been scheduled to discuss the problem. Among the proposed solutions: unleash raptors to hunt them down or physically move the rabbits elsewhere. (At least the bunnies don't appear to be pot-crazed.)