He was drunk — and his girlfriend really wanted a bunny.
That’s the harebrained excuse a homeless guy gave as he was set free today after four months in jail for swiping a rabbit from a store window display in SoHo.
“My girlfriend talked me into it and I was drunk enough to do it,” Thomas Smith, 62, said of snatching a gray, lop-eared rabbit in early March from the Alexander Berardi boutique on Prince Street.
It turns out the bunny heist was Smith’s second pet-napping in five years, Smith’s judge pointed out in court today.
In 2007, Smith served 15 days for momentarily walking off with a German shephard that had been tied up in front of a Duane Reade on 6th Avenue in Greenwich Village. He kept the dog for only a few minutes; he kept the rabbit for four days before turning it in at the 1st Precinct.
“”So you’re a recidivist!” an incredulous-sounding Manhattan Criminal Court Judge Anthony Ferrara asked Smith, in taking the scruffy man’s plea and sentencing him to time served.
“A serial animal kidnapper. This time it was a bunny rabbit,” the judge said, allowing himself the slightest smile.
“Is it true that at 174 Prince Street…you took a rabbit that did not belong to you?” the judge then asked Smith.
“It’s true, your honor,” Smith sighed.
“And you did so knowing that you did not have permission or authority to take the rabbit?” the judge asked.
“It’s true, your honor,” Smith sighed again.
“You know, there are rescue shelters,” the judge told him.
“If your girlfriend has a stable home, you go to a pound and you rescue one and do a good deed. You should talk to her about it.”
Defense lawyer Jared Williams quipped afterward, “You can say the judge called it a hare-y situation.”