Last week, my neighbor Connie pulled me out of my house to help her look for a big white rabbit she claimed she'd seen in her backyard. I don't have to tell you what I figured was in her orange juice.

 But, as it turned out, it was true. I saw the bunny, too, as did many other neighbors. It really was a huge white rabbit with pink ears and a little cottontail. And it was languidly chewing leaves in Connie's yard one day when my neighbor, Fe, and I spied it on our way back from the bus stop with the neighborhood kids.

 I left Fe and my daughter to run a rabbit surveillance and raced back to my home for a cat carrier and a head of lettuce. I grabbed them and ran back to Connie's yard and offered the bunny some lettuce.

 The rabbit completely ignored the lettuce and instead ate Connie's plants. We stood there – Fe and my daughter and I – trying to figure out how in heck a rabbit the size of a small dog could be captured without a battle while the bunny continued to chomp on the greenery and hop haughtily away whenever we intruded too close.

 Then the bunny decided to take a nap right in the middle of Connie's yard. Hmmmm – we thought – maybe we could catch the rabbit while it's sleeping. So we went home and returned, armed with Fe's fishing net.

 Now Fe is from the Philippines and her family fished, so she can toss that net with the best of them. Fe had the net and I had a towel and a carrier and we enlisted Connie to help us.

 The three of us would herd the now-wide-awake rabbit from one side of Connie's yard to the other. The bunny would hippity hop into Connie's neighbor's yard and, at one point, both her neighbor, Bill, and his grown, visiting daughter came out to offer rabbit round-up advice.

 "I'd be pretty careful about just grabbing that rabbit. He'll probably bite you," Bill's daughter said.

 "That's why we're going to throw a fishing net on him," we told her.  She was concerned about the rabbit's fate (I mean, who wouldn't be with three crazed women running around in her yard chasing a rabbit with a fishing net and a towel?) and we assured her the rabbit would end up in a good home – not a stew.

 So we herded the big white bunny from the neighbor's yard back into Connie's yard to where it was pretty much surrounded. I'm sure the rabbit was sitting there thinking we were the biggest bunch of idiots it had ever seen, but it finally just stopped hopping around and sat there, staring at us.

 Fe drew back and tossed the net, right over the bunny. Then I jumped in and threw a towel over our netted hostage and picked up the bunny to drop it in the cat carrier.

 That was a little harder than I thought it would be because the bunny was caught up in the net and we darned near strangled it getting it into the carrier. By the time I shut the carrier door the rabbit was sulking in a corner.

 I asked around and finally found the owners, who decided that they didn't really want it back, so Fe – whose son Ryan had by fortunate coincidence been asking for a bunny – kept her.

 The former owners called her Harvey, which isn't the best name in the world for a girl rabbit. But Harvey soon became Nibbles. Seems that Fe and her husband had a minor disagreement over whether bunnies can bite. Fe said, "She has teeth. She can bite." Mike said she couldn't. Ryan, that little peacemaker, stuck his finger in the cage and Nibbles – out of gratitude to Fe for her net-throwing technique – chomped down on Ryan's digit and earned a new name.

 Nibbles doesn't bite anymore. And she seems quite happy in her new home. But I still have my suspicions about her and her sudden appearance at such a significantly rabbity time of the year.

 Please let me know if the Easter Bunny doesn't make an appearance this year – I might have a connection or two in the rabbit world.