On Wednesday morning, we gathered at 7 am to split into teams and check our rabbit traps. We weren’t sure what to expect after the limited success we had the day before. On the one hand, we had high hopes to catch more rabbits since we had strategically relocated a lot of our traps the previous afternoon. On the other hand, we were trying to keep expectations low in case we had no luck again. We decided to check all traps first, then we would touch base to see if we were going to re-bait the traps in their current locations or potentially scout other areas and move some of the traps another time. The trap checking itself did not take very long, especially because my team did not catch any rabbits. Luckily, the other team had caught two rabbits in some of the traps that had been moved to new locations yesterday! We were excited but this also meant we needed to make a decision: to minimize stress for the rabbits, we would not keep them for longer than one night. Either, we would have to leave today with three rabbits in tow or choose to release our bunny from day 1 and trap for one more night, hoping to catch at least more than one rabbit to make it worthwhile.
After a phone call with our team on the mainland, it was decided we’d stay for another night and give it our best shot. We carried bunny #1 to their original capture location, and before we released them back into the wild we took their weight, collected pellets from their enclosure, and cut a little tuft of fur from the nape of their neck. Since this rabbit wouldn’t be returning to the mainland with us, we wanted to collect samples for genetic analysis, to hopefully learn more about this individual despite not bringing them back with us. Once we had all the data we needed, we sat back and admired the rabbit as they hopped off returning to the thickets.
Next we set off to reposition our traps for the next and final trapping night. We had decided to move a few more of them further inland, as that’s where we had better success thus far. One team positioned the traps in their new locations and the other supplied them with apples and cider to entice the rabbits to enter. We finished our tasks earlier this day and spent the afternoon huddled under the shade of our pop-up tent, organizing and entering data, and even getting the opportunity to play a game of cards. Every so often, we would go check on our two rabbits and thread more greens through their enclosure requesting them to eat. After another gorgeous sunset, we went to bed to be ready for a 6 am trap check, camp take down, and boat pickup by 10:30 am.
The next morning, we were antsy to get out in the field. We split into teams again, briefly checking on the bunnies and offering them more food. As we check traps we moved them into the middle of the trail for easy access to carry all 43 of them back to the beach as soon as we finished checking. The first few traps on our side were empty, but before we were even done checking all of them, we saw John clutching a carrier in his arms and walking towards the rabbit tent! Success! Shortly after, we heard yells that they caught two more rabbits and needed more hands for processing.
In one of our final traps to check, we also had a bunny!! It was a beautiful large male who presented calm while in the trap. When we prepared the bag to process him, we wrapped it around the entrance and slowly opened it for him to enter when all of a sudden.. KA-POW! He escaped. When we were coaxing him into the bag the lid of the trap caught the fabric which allowed the rabbit to escape. He zigzagged away into the brush and left us empty-handed. We didn’t have much time to commiserate though, as we had to go lend hands with the other two rabbits and start carrying down our traps. With the three remaining rabbits secured, we had finished pulling all traps and piling them up on the beach by 8:30 am. That left us enough time to comfortably pack up our personal belongings and camping equipment. By 10 am we were waiting on the beach, looking for our boat on the horizon, in turn being watched by seals swimming in the surf.
Around 10:45 we caught a glimpse of our boat and started pouring out the rest of the freshwater canisters we had brought with us, to reduce the load we had to haul onto the boat. We lugged all 43 traps and our camping gear onto the boat by passing each item from person to person, and then we set sail back to the mainland. The bunnies are now in quarantine, waiting to be released into one of the mainland populations and continue the recovery of their species. What a trip: we spent 4 adventurous days on a remote island, caught 7 bunnies in total, left the island with 5, along with a whole lot of new insights about the New England cottontail population on Nomans Land Island!
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