Eastern Cottontails are a fixture in most neighborhood across the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex. These charming animals make themselves right at home in the urban environment. With plenty of well-watered grass to feed on, cottontails want for nothing. Only when these gently animals venture into vegetable gardens or partake of our ornamentals do they draw the ire of the people they share the neighborhood with. Even then damages done by these small rabbits is usually very minor.
Here is what Wikipedia has to say about the Eastern Cottontail:
The eastern cottontail (Sylvilagus floridanus) is a New World cottontail rabbit, a member of the family Leporidae. It is one of the most common rabbit species in North America.
The eastern cottontail can be found in meadows and shrubby areas in the eastern and south-central United States, southern Canada, eastern Mexico, Central America and northernmost South America. It is abundant in Midwest North America, and has been found in New Mexico and Arizona. Its range expanded north as forests were cleared by settlers. Originally, it was not found in New England, but it has been introduced there and now competes for habitat there with the native New England cottontail. It has also been introduced into parts of Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia. In the mid-1960s, the Eastern cottontail was introduced to northern Italy, where it displayed a rapid territorial expansion and increase in population density.