Could a baby bunny really get through a two-inch gap in the exterior?

Check your weatherstripping and the sweep at the bottom of your exterior doors immediatly. As someone who has spent years installing and repairing entry systems, I can tell you that a baby rabbit can flatten its body and squeeze thru a gap much smaller than you'd think. If your **door sweep** is worn out or if there's even a half-inch clearance between the door and the threshold, a kit can wiggle right through without needing to navigate your basement or climb any stairs. Those gaps you found in the exterior wall are defintely a red flag, but the convoluted path from the crawl space to the kitchen seems less likely than a simple failure at an entry point. Most people don't realize that a door can look closed while still having significant gaps at the corners. Take a flashlight tonight, go outside, and have someone inside look for light leaking through the bottom or sides of the door. If you see light, you've found your rabbit's front door. Since you're allready sealing those wall gaps, get some **copper mesh** or stainless steel wool to stuff into the holes before you caulk or foam them. Rabbits probaly won't chew through the foam, but mice and rats absolutely will, and they follow the same scent trails. Bricks are a decent temporary fix, but determined pests will just dig under or around them if the soil is soft enugh.

And don't overlook the possibility that it didn't come through a hole at all. If you have a dog or cat that uses a pet door, that's the most common culprit. Even if they didn't 'bring' it in, a baby bunny can easily follow the scent of a pet right through a flap. But if I were a betting man, I'd say your garage-to-house door or a side entry has a seal that's seen better days. Replace those old vinyl sweeps with a heavy-duty brush or rubber fin style and you'll likely solve the mystery.

While the previous poster correctly identifies the threshold as a primary failure point, you must rigorously inspect the astragal on your double doors if you possess them, as the vertical seal often degrades at the terminus where it meets the sill, creating a localized aperture that a neonatal leporid coud easily exploit. I once spent an entire Saturday recalibrating a three-point locking mechanism because the slight misalignment caused a three-millimeter compression failure in the bulb weatherstripping, wich is precisely the sort of minute structural deficiency that permits such ingress. Are you certain the hinges haven't sagged, thereby compromising the perimeter seal's architectural integrity and causing that 'convoluted' path to be entirely unnecessary?

Check your garage-to-house transition. If you’re running a standard hollow core door there, the jamb is likely warped. I’ve seen rabbits breeze past a Pemko 216AV door shoe becuase the homeowner didn't adjust the saddle. If that gap is even 3/8 of an inch, it's a highway for a kit. Grab a real neoprene seal like the Zero International 8144. It’s got a way better compression rating than those cheap vinyl strips from the big box stores. Also, did you check the corner pads? If you don't have a wedge seal at the bottom of the jamb, you basially left the door open for it.

You need to look at the actual door frame construction. If your house has settled, standard frames get gaps in the corners that no amount of foam fixes. I'd honestly just swap that garage entry for a Masonite Heritage Series door with the factory-applied Performance Seal. I had a similar issue with squirrels and the compression weatherstripping on those Masonite units is thick enugh that it creates a literal airtight barrier. It’s way more reliable than trying to DIY a seal on a warped old jamb.

OMG that rabbit story is wild!! I’m brand new here and just started looking at my own frames beacuse of this. If I go with one of those heavy-duty neoprene seals everyone is recommending, will it make the door way harder to push shut? I’m super picky about the sound my door makes when it latches—I want that heavy, high-end 'thud' sound. Does the seal type change the acoustics of the door closing? I’d love to keep the critters out but I also want my house to feel like a vault!

So I checked the door sweep and you guys were right—it was totally shredded. Replacing it helped, but I'm still worried about the corner gaps from the house settling. If I swap to a door with a factory-applied performance seal, will that actualy fix a warped frame, or am I looking at a bigger repair job? I just don't want another surprise visitor in my kitchen tonight.