Why do people come to San Juan Island? I’m talking about tourists here. It turns out that our wild things lure some folks to cross oceans and boundaries so they can sit in rabbit pellets hours on end, entertained by real world drama—as in ‘fox stalking rabbit.’ And then there is the feverish shooting of playful kits romping on the prairie … just photos nowadays. I get it. My own photo gallery bulges with foxes, eagles, whales, harbor seals, otters, nursing fawns, a majestic buck, along with at least a hundred bird species. There are also some family pictures – although those creatures are truly moving targets.
Red fox, black fox, gray fox too – imported to the island by who knows who? Sometime in the late 20th century the island foxes appeared and perhaps inspired hope for the starving farm industry, which was under siege by a flood of rabbits, according to old-timers. Green peas were a major cash crop. Imagine your field of new peas, transformed into a field of fat rabbits. In a way it was a range war. The “hare raising” farmers, who were losing money, and not willing to buy more rabbit food, freed several thousands of their stock. The rabbits then eagerly fed on the neighbor’s crops. That was in the 1930s – last century.
After that, tourists came to hunt rabbits. It went like this: the rabbits stand rigid next to their holes, scared stupid – just like today – while hunters bouncing along in old jalopies nab them with nets. And presumably bag them and take them home for rabbit stew. They could also shoot them – with actual guns– but netting was more sportsmanlike and, well, more entertaining. One old-timer, Guard Sundstrom, reminisced during a get together at the grange in 2012:
“We charged people to go hunting … and one time there wasn’t any money in [the rabbit] jar and I wasn’t going to go to the dance, you know, the dance was $2.50 I think, and luckily rabbit hunters came by that day and I got five bucks. I was tour guide and I’d come out and show them where to hunt rabbits. So I went to the dance.”
Between the release of about 3,000 rabbits from the failed venture in 1934, and a survey by the department of game in 1971, San Juan was hopping with rabbit tourism. That year the Game Department estimated at least one million rabbits on San Juan Island – and possibly over 100,00 bagged yearly. Fast forward maybe 30 years, more or less: human hunter-gatherers are out and foxes are in. Tourists still flock to San Juan Island, not to bag rabbits, but to shoot foxes and other wild things, and take them home in a thumb drive. The foxes have a life expectancy of three to five years–while the bunnies, according to those who know such things–Wikipedia–can live up to 12 years or more. According to expert Dr. Dana Krumpels, one female rabbit could potentially produce 1,332 additional female rabbits within two years (bio.miami.edu/hare/scary.html). She estimates that given no predators one female rabbit, within seven years, could cause a national takeover with over 95 billion rabbits. It’s a crazy wild world out there. Pass the peas please.
