Two Men Claimed One Rabbit Rescue, and a Red Hoodie Became the Clue

In December 2017, as the Thomas Fire burned along the California coast, a short video spread fast online. It showed a man in a red hoodie running onto a burning stretch of Highway 101 near La Conchita and scooping up a frantic wild rabbit.²³

The Thomas Fire was described at the time as one of the largest fires in California’s history.⁶ The rabbit got medical care, and the story came with an unexpected subplot: two different men said they were the one in the video.¹

Two claims, one rabbit

Oscar Gonzales told local news that he was the rescuer. Then NBC4 in Los Angeles reported that it had reason to believe he wasn’t. Using an enhanced image from the original footage, the station concluded the man was Caleb Wadman, who was wearing the same outfit seen in the clip: a red hoodie and black athletic shorts.² Gonzales and his girlfriend still insisted he was the man in the video.²

Support for Wadman’s account came from a veterinary clinic. According to HuffPost, a receptionist at Conejo Valley Veterinary Hospital said the man who brought the rabbit in wore the exact outfit from the video and said he had rescued her from the spot where it was filmed.³ The receptionist also said it could not have been Gonzales, who had said he simply released the rabbit. The man at the clinic had brought her in for treatment.³

What happened on the highway

Wadman, who was 21, told HuffPost he was on the highway in La Conchita when he saw a small wild rabbit in serious distress.³ He described his reaction to NBC4 simply: “I just ran after it.”²

“In the video that everybody sees, I was going crazy because she was screaming,” Wadman told HuffPost.⁴

The rabbit was a wild female cottontail with burns and heat damage. Wadman took her to Conejo Valley Veterinary Hospital, which transferred her to the California Wildlife Center.³⁶

A reunion, and a debate

Inside Edition reported that Wadman visited the rabbit at the wildlife center, where she was being treated for burns to her ears and feet.⁵⁴ Duane Tom, the center’s director of animal care, told HuffPost she was improving but that it was too soon to tell how fully she would recover.³

Not everyone cheered. Newsweek reported that many experts caution people against trying to rescue wild animals from fires, and that Wadman risked needing rescue himself.¹ Some critics argued a wild rabbit didn’t need human help at all.⁵

Tom disagreed about this particular rabbit. “This rabbit needed to get medical attention,” he told Inside Edition.⁵