As of eight months ago, Miami International Airport was put on notice by the Federal Aviation Administration: Deal with the jackrabbits proliferating around your airfields or we'll send Elmer Fudd after you. Airport officials estimate that there could be as many as 500 jackrabbits burrowing along the runways and feeding off the rough brush that seems to grow only in airports and abandoned sandlots. Although they originated in the Southwest, no one is sure when these rabbits came to MIA. But they've become a problem, in part because the airport is adding a fourth runway and two new "taxiways," thereby taking away a huge portion of their remaining habitat; in part because these bunnies are no mere bunnies: They can stretch three feet in length when in full stride, and would not take kindly to being anybody's bitch (jackrabbits can bite your finger off).

But actually, the rabbits aren't the real threat. They're what Larry Brashears, the district supervisor for wildlife services of the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Wildlife in South Florida, calls a "secondary hazard." The primary threat, say airport officials, are the turkey buzzards, a.k.a. vultures, who hover over the airport grounds waiting for the Boeing 757s to squash our little friends into furry patties, so they can pick at the simmering carcasses on the subtropic tarmac. Turkey buzzards are slow, ugly -- and most important, mammoth creatures. With a wingspan of six feet, these bald-headed big boys pack enough punch to destroy an airplane engine if sucked into the rumbling turbine at just the right takeoff angle. What's more, they congregate by the dozens. Just go to the county courthouse to see.

Between 1982 and 2001, the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board reported 103 incidents involving airplanes and birds across the country. There were eleven in Florida alone, where gulls, wading birds like pelicans and herons, and, of course, turkey buzzards are in abundance. Some of the reports, which can be found online, are enough to make you think about packing your own BB gun next time you head for MIA (though you'd never get a chance to use it). "Bird strikes," as they're known in NTSB-lingo, caused electricity outages, "severe vertical vibrations," engines to "flame" out, and ruptured fuel lines. Several reports talked of smashed windshields and splattered birdbrains. One stated that a bird "penetrated the canopy and struck the pilot's face." (That plane had to land in a hayfield and flipped over in the process. Luckily, the pilot was unhurt, except from all the feathers ...)

Over the years ducks, geese, hawks, and crows have also caused major malfunctions, deviations, and emergency landings for mostly small planes, as well as numerous injuries, and twelve recorded deaths nationwide. And Brashears says the official statistics grossly underestimate the actual number of "bird strikes," which happen several times a day in Florida: "Most of the strikes are not noticed or reported," he explains. "You hear a 'thud,' and then they find a bird laying in the grass." The problem intensifies during the winter when birds head south for "the same reasons that people do." MIA officials say they've had two nonfatal (for humans) incidents already this year and average "a dozen" annually.

To deal with these feathered guys, Brashears has four or five (it varies) part-time "birdmen" -- the name given to Homestead Air Force Base's USDA bird-chasers -- roaming the state's airfields and bird-flocking areas near the "danger zones," such as the Medley landfill by MIA. These birdmen carry "launchers" -- handguns resembling starting pistols. When the birds congregate, or if airplanes are approaching or preparing for takeoff, birdmen shoot "bird-bombs," loud, M-80-like firecrackers that soar a hundred feet into the air and then explode. Problem is, the pesky birds soon get used to the bombs, and then the birdmen have to move to "screamers," which send up a loud piercing whistle. When the birds get used to those, Brashears's raiders break out the real deal. "We save a lot of birds by having to shoot a few," Brashears says with a wisp of sadness. After a couple hit the ground, the rest get the message and take off, he says.

Airport officials say they have a birdman who works for the county on site from dawn to dusk who picks up dead rabbits and regularly shoots firecrackers in the air to frighten the turkey buzzards away. "The problem is they're not that scared because they're already in the air," says Bruce Drum, the assistant director of operations at MIA. Officials also say they don't shoot birds, making Brashears's alternative method moot. So short of sending an Apache helicopter to deal with the problem, the airport was forced to take on the "secondary hazard," the Southwest jackrabbits.

The problem is a strange one considering that black-tailed jackrabbits come from Texas and points west -- Arizona, New Mexico. They're not known to migrate or change habitat, so it's an open case how they actually got here. MIA's Drum says "urban legend" has it that when MIA was known as Pan Am Field early last century, there was a jackrabbit farm on the property that greyhound trainers used to tune up their racing dogs. But Baird Thompson, a marketer for several racetracks in Florida and Texas, who's been affiliated with dog racing for twenty years, dismisses this theory. Thompson says using live animals to train the dogs was prohibited even before the sport came to Florida early in the last century. Besides, no one would risk using a disease-and-parasite-ridden rabbit to train a $10,000 dog. And, he adds, "Who could ever make rabbits run in circles?"

Another theory is that they snuck under the radar. The jackrabbits might have crept into some cargo that was loaded onto an airplane, or were brought here illegally and then escaped. (MIA officials report that Dallas/Ft. Worth International Airport had a similar problem with jackrabbits a while back, making it a possible starting point.) Like so many others who accidentally land in South Florida, these stowaways apparently looked around and decided to make the best of it. And why not? It was hot, sunny, and there was plenty of food. Best of all, they had no natural predators. As they do, the creatures multiplied (jackrabbits can reproduce four times a year), and soon filled the over five square miles of airport grounds.

Drum, who has worked at Miami International for 26 years, says the rabbits have been there since he started but didn't used to bother anyone. He said the problem was "exacerbated" by the "Fourth Runway Project," which eliminated a mile and a half of their greenery. Since the FAA's order during a routine inspection last year, the airport has spent numerous man-hours and meetings trying to deal with them -- at one point they even contemplated an "adopt a rabbit program." Metrozoo wouldn't take them because it has no room and they are considered nuisance animals.

Relocation in Florida was blocked because state law prohibits moving nonnative animals around the state. Sending them back where they came from wasn't an option either, because jackrabbits are classified as "exotic," meaning once they're here, you can't touch them. So the airport, it appears, is left with one solution. "We're very sensitized to life itself," Drum laments. "[But] I really have to put the safety of the public ahead of any other consideration." In this, Drum has the support of the zoo. "This is not a bunny in a pet shop," says Ron Magill, chief publicist at Metrozoo. "The only solution is to eradicate them."

The next step will see MIA contacting Brashears's office at the USDA. Brashears says that if this case follows the pattern of others he's dealt with, USDA will first look at changing the habitat to make it inhospitable to rabbits -- cutting down shrubs and burning grass, so they'll leave. If that doesn't work, the rabbits will be trapped, using some scrumdili-icious veggies, and then unceremoniously euthanized. Rabbits being rabbits, though, Brashears worries that the jacks may seek to replace their friends as quickly as they lose them, in the old-fashioned way. That would leave just one option.

Brashears says he's had to gun down trespassing animals in the past, mostly coyote and deer. Still, the soft-spoken USDA district supervisor didn't seem too positive about the prospect of sharp-shooting the fuzzy, long-eared intruders over the next few months.

But there are others who might not be so squeamish. "If you went out with a spotlight," says Todd Harwick of Pesky Critters, a local animal control company, "you could shoot most of them in one night and be done with it."

Harwick isn't officially advocating this, but he says if it came to it, shotguns with thin seven- or eight-inch shells would do the job best, because they don't carry very far.