Bye-bye, bunnies.
The City Council hopped to it Wednesday and voted to prohibit pet stores from selling rabbits — part of an animal- rights package that’s headed to Mayor de Blasio’s desk for approval.
Sponsors of the ban cited a doubling in the number of unwanted rabbits at city shelters — from 300 in 2012 to 600 in 2014 — as well as the creatures’ proclivity for reproduction.
“Rabbits reproduce like — rabbits,” Council Member Elizabeth Crowley (D-Queens) said to laughter at a press conference promoting the bills. “There’s no space in the shelter system right now for rabbits.”
If signed by the mayor, the bill would still allow bunnies to be kept as pets — but would prohibit them from being sold within city limits.
One animal-rights advocate told Reuters that rabbits aren’t as cuddly as they look.
“Rabbits are sometimes disappointing, especially when you buy them for your child,” said Margo DeMello, president of the House Rabbit Society, in Richmond, Calif., which she described as the world’s largest rabbit shelter.
“They’re ground-dwelling and they do not want to be held and carried around.’’
Other measures that passed the council included regulations to halt the indirect purchase of cats and dogs from “puppy mills;” a requirement that pet stores spay or neuter animals before sale, and that they also implant microchips in dogs and cats.
“It is disgusting, it is inhumane, it is immoral how people are treating animals — only for the reason of profit and money,” said Council Health Committee Chair Corey Johnson (D-Manhattan). “And so today is a great step forward.”
Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles already have laws banning pet stores from selling rabbits.
But city officials are considering lifting the ban on ferrets, outlawed in 1999 as critters prone to “vicious, unprovoked attacks.”
City Hall officials did not say if the mayor intends to sign the new council bills.