Bunny napper sprung after four months jail

[Misfit]

SoHo bunny napper sprung after four months jail - NYPOST.com

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.