Feeling a chill? Let's burn some bunnies for warmth

How low have we sunken in our quest for new energy sources? Low enough, apparently, to burn dead bunnies for fuel.

The city of Stockholm, apparently, has an ongoing problem with too many rabbits that gnaw on greenery in city parks and get together to make even more rabbits. Blamed in part on pet-owners who tire of their bunnies and set them loose, the rabbit plague is fought by animal control employees who shoot first and have only one question to ask later: what to do with all these bunny carcassses? (And they collect a lot of bunny carcasses: almost 6,000 last year.)

Stockholm’s answer: freeze them, then ship them to a heating plant that burns them up for energy.

A local animal rights group says Stockholm could do better by copying Helsinki, which manages its rabbit problem by spraying plants to make them less tasty and establishing shelters where pet-owners can take animals they no longer want.

Most locals, though, aren’t too worked up over the bunnies-as-biofuel debate. Writes one local blogger, “After all, the bunnies lived happy lives until it was time to turn up the heat.”