BUNNYTOWN: where Easter happens every day

Created and curated in Albuquerque, New Mexico by Jeff Hartzer, BUNNYTOWN is a place of light in an ever darkening world. 'Rabbits Gone Wild' - 1995-2021.

BUNNYTOWN: ORIGINS

In 1994, my wife and I bought our first and only house, an extreme fixer upper near downtown Albuquerque. An elderly renter named Tency May Person lived in the studio in back. The realtor said did we want to retain her. As we were desperately poor on my mid-school salary, we said, “Hell yea!”

(top) Rear view of our house in 1994…(bottom) BUNNYTOWN proper is out by the alley way. The white studio pictured became “The Rabbithole” about which a visitor once commented, “this place smells like the seventies”. There’s a view out the window looking out onto the rabbits.(mentioned in POSTCARD FROM BUNNYTOWN seen below)

As an early 'home owner', I thought I would be writing poignant tales about Tency May Person...Didn't take long to lose that writer's fantasy...We soon realized that a group of crack and pot (illegal in 1994) dealers would give Tency bottles of liquor and proceed to run in an out of the yard selling their wares in a our alley and out front on Edith Boulevard, walking noisily by our bedroom at all hours.

It became a dark time that first year. My ‘teaching day’ was much easier than what I faced at home. One post teaching afternoon during that first month as a 'landlord',  I was resting on our front porch when Tency May Person came around the corner saying, "Jeff, I smell gas." I walk her to the backyard studio and she lights up a Marlboro at the door. Inside, it did smell of gas and I found the gas leak. The gas was coming from a broken knob caused by a fight in the studio the previous night. 

Initially, creating BUNNYTOWN became a source for a safe 'my place'. LIGHT began to build on our property. We celebrated each 'completion' along a long long road. Some guests came once and never again. We loved our circa 1896 home where character rules. Bright, happy times, grew from that RCA TV set in a small corner of our world.

A writer/story teller came to our school toting a big Rex rabbit which I became more interested in than his lesson plan. He said his health was poor and that he needed to adopt out his rabbit.

“ Harvey Wolfie Munch Butt” became our first rabbit at what would become widely known as BUNNYTOWN. His first hutch was a discarded RCA tv cabinet with chicken wire surrounding. It was one small corner of our new yard that I felt in control of and it became a genuinely bright place of light, love, laughter, and kindness. I named the little patch BUNNYTOWN.

There was an old school feed store on my to/from school drive. From there I got Harvey a friend. And soon, another. I realize it is way off color however it was for a time, the gay bunny buck spot…as all my adoptees were purposefully male. In not too many months, I 
picked up a new bunny at Brown’s Feed Store and, you guessed her Chester, that bunny was a beautiful female. 

BUNNYTOWN dot com became an early website for us. Year round neighborhood children would ask, “Is BUNNYTOWN  open?” Eventually, too, BUNNYTOWN became an obvious choice for reporters craving Easter time segments on the evening news. And print media craved Easter stories as well. 


You can write just so much each year about chocolate bunnies, and the annual Good Friday pilgrimages to Chimayo (see an earlier Substack post about 'pilgrimages' from Chaucer to Chimayo, New Mexico)...A favorite former writer at the Albuquerque Journal, Leslie Linthicum wrote "Lessons in Living, From BunnytownUSA". 

The funniest segment became a KRQE tv slot for reporter Bill Wood, who ran a popular show called, “A POSTCARD FROM…(New Mexico sites of interest). Here is Bill’s story on YouTube. 

A POSTCARD FROM BUNNYTOWN 

BUNNYTOWN was well known in the neighborhood. Albuquerque Public Schools even brought occasional field trip busloads of kids to learn what CORPUSCULAR meant (Rabbit eat their own first poop(! the second poop is your typical “Rabbit Marbles.” Often neighbors would stop by for BUNNYTOWN’s organic soil.

As more and more burrows are built, that earth starts to pile up. We handed out wheelbarrows of Bunny Dirt and also often adopted out the many (over the years) bunnies. Nothing cuter than a baby bunny ‘sky hopping’ at their burrow popping into view for first time. One of our earliest web domains under the Mothership, AquilaArts dot com, was BUNNYTOWN dot com.

And another TV story a few years yet another story from our backyard to yours.

WHERE EASTER HAPPENS: EVERY DAY

While the light sculptures and little town called BUNNYTOWN is still a lit up place of peace in our backyard, like so many worldly changes that came with the pandemic, an odd thibg happened. Three weeks before ‘lock down’ our final five adult rabbits were hit with a ‘flu’ and quickly passed in the Bunny Heaven.

Happily living in the Bunnytown environs using abandoned ‘rabbit holes’ are five ornate box turtles.

There is also an above ground heated ‘pond’ complete with year round fish including a giant Oscar and an even more giant Hypostomus plecostomus, also known as the suckermouth catfish.

Our property is filled with lights and love after beginning so darkly in 1994; the first lights were in that little corner of our world, BUNNYTOWN and our ‘house’ is a happy ‘home’.

BUNNYTOWN 2025

DRAY and ROO on guard at BUNNYTOWN, a place of light and love in a darkening world.