California Marine Tenderly Nurtures Bunnies

A U.S. Marine has become an online hero for saving four tiny bunnies and nurturing them for two months before placing them in a wildlife refuge center.

Joshua Bisnar, a Naval Hospital Corpsman, was raking the volleyball court at Camp Pendleton, his California Marine Corps base, when he discovered a small hole with the four bunnies inside. He picked them up and put them into a box cushioned with old shirts.

He researched how to care for the animals, and fed them from bottles until they could eat solid food. He even gave them names: Steven, Raymond, Vaughn and James. When they began jumping out of the box two months later, he took them to the Wetlands and Wildlife Care in Huntington, Calif.

Bisnar posted this story on the content-sharing site Reddit June 19, where it immediately went viral on the front page. Overnight, his story became a sensation, with people saying he was "truly a hero" and a "great human being." (There were several comments expressing a romantic interest in Bisnar too.)

"It was a lot of hard work, but I loved the bunnies," Bisnar wrote on Reddit. He also posted two videos of him feeding the bunnies on YouTube, which amassed 240,600 shares as of this morning.

Bisnar wrote in an email to ABCNews.com that he and a friend had switched off caring for the bunnies. He posted the story on Reddit "not thinking much would happen, maybe just a few pity 'up' votes."

"Now all the ladies are trying to wife me up, memes are being made of me and my YouTube videos have hit over 100k views. People from my command are now realizing that I'm "the bunny guy," he wrote in his email.

Bisnar, according to his Facebook profile, has served in the U.S. Navy since January 2010 and is from Newport, Calif. He was apparently nervous about the reaction he'd get from his unit: On June 20, he wrote on his Facebook page: "Oh god … My command found out about the bunnies I saved two years ago … Lets see how this goes."

He was told the commanding officer would probably want to talk to him, "but as long as I don't currently have them in my room, and I never said anything bad about the military…"

He wrote on Reddit that his barracks was not inspected while he was taking care of the bunnies, so he did not get caught harboring them.

Overall, he said he was pleased with the attention because he believes it shows the military in a positive light.

"It's a nice change for the media to be covering positive things about the military, and a lot of the comments on the videos and pictures are very supportive of us," he told ABCNews.com