Author: Cara Giaimo / Source: Atlas Obscura
On the afternoon of Sunday, February 18, Las Vegas residents Stacey Taylor and Dave Schweiger did what they do pretty much every weekend: they swung by 6171 West Charleston Boulevard to check on the bunnies. Most days, there are hundreds of wild house rabbits there, hopping around on the grounds of a state mental health facility.
Taylor—the head of a local rabbit rescue group—and Schweiger, a longtime volunteer, visit the grounds often to feed and water the rabbits. That day, they also wanted to pick up a few of them, so they could get them checked out by a vet and take them to an upcoming adoption event.
Instead, they were confronted by a nightmarish scene. “We started seeing dead bunnies all over the place,” says Schweiger. “We saw over 30. And we knew there were more underground that we couldn’t see.”
As Atlas Obscura reported last year, Las Vegas is full of “dump site bunnies”: abandoned pets and their offspring, who have formed their own ad-hoc communities in the city’s yards, state parks, and other green spaces. For about five years, volunteers like Taylor and Schweiger have been trying to help the animals: they lay out fresh food and water for them, and work to educate the public about what it really takes to own a bunny, so as to cut down on abandonment. When resources allow, they also hold local adoption events for rabbits they rescue from the sites.
It is unclear who killed the rabbits at 6171 West Charleston. On Monday, volunteers spotted an unknown person dumping vegetables at the site that seemed to be covered in antifreeze. (They’ve since sent the vegetables, as well as several of the dead rabbits, to get tested.) The Department of Health and Human Services has “asked for an investigation…
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