Wanna buy a rabbit?

It is quite a thing when the local auction barn cancels its poultry and rabbit auction without notice. (Seems they are afraid of bird flu. Guess they expect it to arrive in upstate New York real soon.)

Anyhow Empire Livestock in Central Bridge did just that yesterday to the chagrin of dozens of buyers and sellers who showed up interested in trading small critters. There were rows of cars and piles of boxes as sellers wondered what the heck they were going to do with their spare bunnies and chickens. Buyers ran around asking, "Got a dozen chickens?" "What color rabbits you got there?" Talk about chaos! (Interestingly the small animal sale is still listed on the company website. Just scroll down to the Central Bridge Tuesday sale to see for yourself.)

Of course the company has the right to do whatever they want as far as their auction goes, and for the most part the small livestock sale was always a bit of a pain for the beef and calf sellers that keep the place afloat. However it is just plain foolish not to inform regular customers of the impending closing. And bird flu is a lousy excuse. It will probably get here some time, but selling or not selling rabbits in upstate New York isn’t going to change that one bit.

Anyhow, if anybody wants to buy a rabbit or two, Alan still has four of the five he took over to sell yesterday. He sold the other one to a kid in the parking lot who went over to the sale with his heart set on taking home a rabbit.