There he was, cute as button, hunched over the remnants of a well-run-over acorn in the middle of the road. A rare sight for our area: a common rabbit carelessly dining in the middle of our gravel road. Instead of fleeing to the tall grass on either side of the thoroughfare as is usually the case when one gets a glance at a wild rabbit, the creature gave my girls and me not much more than a casual, fleeting look and kept on nibbling. For a full minute or so, we watched the animal, then it lazily hopped from the road and drifted off behind a rock wall.

What could be more adorable than a sweet little brown bunny, really? To us, not much. As is often the case when one is privileged to observe a creature at an unusually close range, I found myself enamored of the furry brown animal. Then a shocking jolt ran through me.

Wait a minute! Isn’t this the trap I fell into with that cute little groundhog peeking over the rock wall near my garden? And those graceful deer grazing in the field below? Those turkeys flocking up on the side yard? Weren’t they once the most curious darling animals?

Yes, indeed they were, until the reality of their existence hit home in the form of topped-off plants, pecked pumpkins and leaf-stripped trees.

Truth is, I still do see a great deal of beauty in those creatures, so long as they keep their taste buds off my garden. Before I neatly categorized this sweet bunny into the realm of “darling and innocent,” I needed to research the true nature of the critter.

First of all, being a “plant person,” I call the creature we saw a rabbit, and I believe it was a common rabbit or eastern cottontail. There’s a chance, of course, that it was a snowshoe hare in a summer coat. A slim chance it is though, after checking out the creature and its tracks. So for our purposes, we’ll call the critter a rabbit.

Turns out rabbits, in fact, can do considerable damage to flowers, vegetables, trees and shrubs any time of the year. Cottontails tend to favor living in brushy thickets, field edges or overgrown fencerows or brush piles. Naturally, they will dwell in an ordinary back yard, so long as food and cover are suitable. Clever critters that they are, they often dwell in natural cavities in the earth or ledge or in burrows excavated by groundhogs.

This stunning statistic caught my eye: Rabbits spend their entire lives in an area of 10 acres or less. This suggests that once you’ve spotted rabbits in your yard or garden, you’re likely to spot them – or their damage – again.

Cottontails prefer succulent, green vegetation. Rabbit damage can be identified by a clean-cut clipped appearance of young stems and a gnawed appearance on older woody growth. The animals leave distinctive round droppings in their wake.

Where rabbits are a persistent problem, control of their population is accomplished through modifying the habitat to create a less desirable environment for their dwelling. Removal of dense vegetative cover – usually low growing bushes – and removal of brush piles, weed patches and stone piles is usually effective.

To protect limited gardens and plantings, fencing made from chicken wire, with openings in the mesh that measure less than an inch, can be placed around herbaceous plants. The fence must reach a height of least 2 feet and should be buried at least 6 inches. The tender bark of susceptible young orchard trees can be ringed with 18- to 24-inch cylinders constructed with quarter-inch wire hardware cloth. The bottom of the cylinder should be buried at least 6 inches and should extend up the trunk to the lowest branches.

According to a survey of homeowners in one central U.S. state, rabbits particularly like to indulge on garden perennials including clematis, maidenhair fern, anemone, New England aster, hosta, lupine, sweet woodruff, purple coneflower, coreopsis, baby’s breath, tree peony, bellflower and Oriental poppy. Annuals they gravitate toward include snapdragon, cockscomb, morning glories, bachelor’s button, cosmos, sunflower, impatiens, sweet pea, petunia, nasturtium and zinnia. Apparently they also enjoy crocus, Dutch iris, Asiatic lily and tulip.

Naturally, the vegetable garden is not likely to remain unscathed if you have rabbits in your area. They may indulge in beets, Swiss chard, broccoli, lettuce, beans, peas and spinach.

And so you see, this is how a creature moves from the benign “sweet and furry” list to the “potentially dreadful” list in a jiffy. Nonetheless, until I actually see definite evidence in my garden of the creature’s damage, I’ll keep an open mind about its existence in the neighborhood. Until one places its incisors on my precious flowers, herbs and veggies, I’ll keep my thoughts pleasant and my plants guarded.

Diana George Chapin is the NEWS garden columnist. Send horticulture questions to Gardening Questions, 512 North Ridge Road, Montville 04941 or e-mail dianagc@midcoast.com. Selected questions will be answered in future columns. Include name, address and telephone number.