At her home, a recently landscaped slope in her backyard is pockmarked with holes dug by rabbits scrounging up young plants. “But I don’t know how you prove that they’re coming into town because of the rabbits or not.
– 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.)