Who's Who: Judy Hardin, Owner of RabbitEars

Name: Judy Hardin

Age: 61

Occupation: Owner of

Was your business previously in Kensington? We were in Kensington for six years, and we’ve been here (on Fairmount Avenue) for a year and a half.

Are you from El Cerrito? No, but I’ve been here for many years.

How do you like it? We love El Cerrito.

What inspired the world of bunnies? I volunteered for House Rabbit Society for many, many years before I started it. Then I just decided to open up a little cottage industry for people who had adopted rabbits.

And that’s your specialty here – rabbits and all things rabbits? That’s pretty much our specialty, but we do have other small animals: we have hampsters, we have guinea pigs, sometimes birds, once a hedgehog, chinchillas, rats and mice. And they’re all 11th-hour rescued.

Do you have a story about one of your pets to share? One day, it was a slow day, and I was combing a bunny up at the counter – it wasn’t at this location, it was another – and a guy came in and he said he had a gun and he wanted all my money from the cash register. I didn’t know if he had a gun, but I was certainly going to give him what he wanted. I put the bunny down on the counter and was going to the register and she started thumping – you know how rabbits thump?

With her back paw? Yes. She was thumping really loud, like that (thumps the counter loudly), and he got really agitated and said, “What’s she doing?” I said, “That’s how they communicate that something needs to be looked at.” And she wouldn’t stop; she just continued. And he got so agitated that he ran out of the store.

That bunny saved your life – or your money at least. If it had been a perfect story, he would have dropped the gun and we would have called the cops and they would have got him.