Over 100 rabbits taken from California 'backyard hoarding situation' — and the number could grow

A few months ago, Joe Torcello noticed a rabbit in the alley next to his house.

Torcello said that he waved to the rabbit and passed by but that the next day, it was gone. He said it continued like that for months, with the rabbit showing up "on and off, sneaking in through under my fence."

Then, he noticed a bunny when he was cleaning the backyard. A few days later, a skunk appeared in his garage before a rabbit jumped on it and the two animals started to play together.

A couple of days after that, a completely different rabbit was in his backyard.

"It was just getting weirder and weirder," Torcello said, before he realized the rabbits had "procreated very quickly" over a few months.

Over 100 rabbits were taken from Torcello's Southern California backyard in what the Bunny World Foundation, or BWF, has called a "hoarding situation" that unraveled last week.

On Feb. 20, the Los Angeles Animal Services Department reached out to BWF seeking help rescuing a "large number of rabbits" that were found in the backyard of a home in the Granada Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles, according to a news release shared by Lejla Hadzimuratovic, BWF's president and founder.

Torcello said it took a few months for him to finally call for help with his rabbit problem.

Seeing a bunch of bunnies "bolting out at me" from his tortoise's burrow in the backyard prompted the call. He said he tried to block the bunnies in so they weren't running around in the alley before help could come.

When BWF got to the scene Saturday, the team found "a massive backyard rabbit hoarding disaster with babies, nursing mothers, juveniles, and adult rabbits running across several yards, exposed to the elements and unprotected from predators," the news