Rabbit Liberated from Captivity: UPDATED!

In a kindergarten, no less: "Pet rabbit stolen from Spokane preschool".

SPOKANE, Wash. — Children at a downtown preschool got an unplanned lesson in animal rights activism when their pet rabbit was stolen and anti-circus fliers were left in the animal's cage.

Sugar Bunny vanished from the Community Building Children's Center during a celebration of building renovations Saturday evening, teachers said.

"Somebody stoled him," 5-year-old Zion told The Spokesman-Review, which gave only the first names of him and other children in a report on the heist. "I'm sad."

If animal rights activists desire to sway others to their cause, this seems a path ill-suited to that end. Granted, I've heard horror stories about class pets -- one about a gerbil comes to mind -- but the plight of bunnies in schools can hardly be any worse than the plight of bunnies in the wild. Schools are notably free of coyotes and hawks, and bunnies raised in such predator-free environments are probably bad candidates for Survival of the Fittest. When the other choice is Nature, Red in Tooth and Claw, I would think that Kindergarten, Pink in Pudgy Finger, is vastly preferable. Not that bunnies have preferences or thoughts -- just twitches, mostly. Moreover, the food in Kindergarten World comes to bunny, unlike Nature. If I were a bunny, and were I (unnaturally) endowed with free agency, I think I'd choose kindergarten.

One other interesting angle in this case is that the bunny liberators apparently want to incriminate other animal rights activists:

The fliers that were left were for protests against the Ringling Brothers Circus, which was in town Friday through Sunday, and showed a picture of a bear trying to escape beneath the bars of a cage. Listed at the bottom were People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and the Northwest Animal Rights Network.

Both PETA and NARN have denied any involvement in the rabbit heist, and I tend to believe them. Priggish annoyance is more their modus operandi.

UPDATE: While the animal rights activists of Spokane are liberating rabbits from captivity, the animal rights activists of Long Island are demanding that liberated rabbits return to captivity: "Rabbits Being Abandoned on Long Island".

MASSAPEQUA PARK, N.Y. — Animal rights activists are hopping mad because they can't find the wascals who've been dumping domestic wabbits all over the place.

People have been dropping the furry creatures on roadways, in parks and near school grounds on Long Island's South Shore with increasing regularity in recent months, animal control experts said.

In this case, the activists are the Long Island Rabbit Rescue Group, an organization whose mission I need not define, thanks to their self-explanatory name. Their reasons for protesting the rabbit releases should sound familiar to my dear readers:

"The rabbits often can't fend for themselves in the wild and end up starving to death or being killed by raccoons or diseases."

Well, yes: that nicely describes the plight of rabbits in the wild, generally speaking. When food is scarce, rabbits starve and die. When food is plentiful, rabbits get fat and get eaten. This is the way nature works. Essentially, rabbits are furry protein, animate waystations for nutrients on their way from plants to predators. This is what Mufasa called the Circle of Life and what middle school science teachers call the Food Chain.

I'm not sure which is less logical: thinking that rabbits in kindergartens is animal cruelty or thinking that rabbits in the wild is animal cruelty.