I woke up this morning to my parents dog playing a game with a baby rabbit she found in the garden. She would let it go and watch it run away for a while, then run and catch it. I finally decided to put it out of its misery after i saw the dog wouldn't...

Oh that's terrible! Morbid curiosity demands I ask: how did you do the deed?

That's so sad. Poor little guy. How did you put it out of its misery?

Last year my teenage son was mowing someone's lawn and he ran over a hole, which unbeknownst to him was a rabbit hole. The babies were scared of the sound of the lawn mower, and got confused, and instead of just hiding in the hole, they tried to run out at the exact moment the mower was over the hole. Two of them got scalped. My son was freaked out for weeks about it.

What a cheery thread!

I smashed it's head with a sledgehammer because i wanted it to be a quick end. I had to weigh my aversion to killing versus my aversion to suffering...

iconomy, i too have run over rabbit holes while mowing...once with an industrial mower. That mower didn't just scalp them...

I hate that part of responsible pet ownership too. I have only been able to do the deed by first tossing the poor rodent (mouse, chipmunk, whatever) into a paper bag and then doing the whacking - it seems less personal that way, and a little bit easier to take.

I also have to keep reminding myself that the cats don't have the same moral structures as we do.

I'm sorry, schyler, that must have been very, very difficult to do.

the worse part was after i'd put it out of its misery, the dog looked at me with the 'why'd you do that for?' look...

ya'll kill the stuff your animals bring home?

Maybe my cats have secretly been wusses but I've found I could nurse the birds and mice back to health unless they were aready dead. (none of the birds had broken wings or something equally unmendable for example).

Maybe I'm the wuss.

Such is Nature, and it's never any of the animals' faults. Sad story, though.

I once worked in a greenhouse that was frequented by a local outdoor cat. One day the cat entered the greenhouse carrying something that perhaps, from a distance, looked like a toy. All of the ladies rushed over to greet the cat, then screamed when they saw it was carrying the head of a rabbit dangling from its mouth by the ears.

It was probably a dog that beheaded the rabbit, though. A German shepherd can dismember a rabbit in seconds and leave the pieces strewn around the space of an acre.

Such is Nature and instinct. That's all.

By the time I'd gotten to it dabitch, it had been defurred over 2/3 of its body and was bleeding heavily...it was a matter of waiting for it to die over a long period, or putting it out of it's misery...