One of our neighbor's once kept free-range rabbits. She fed them and gave them a house, but they just sort of wandered around.
One day, I found one huddled under my car just before I left for work. I had no trouble picking it up, and it didn't seem right so I took it to a vet who diagnosed a compaction, cleared her out, and we took her home with us a couple days later. We adopted her and kept her indoors after that; she wasn't young (the neighbor didn't care; she wasn't eating them or anything, she just like rabbits).
I have a couple of points here:
- Vet said rabbits aren't very robust, and it was likely she'd have just died by the next day if we hadn't brought her in
- Her being mostly domesticated helped me get ahold of her, probably contributing to her surviving that episode.
I don't know if there's a moral. Except maybe that sometimes if they let you get close it's because they're too sick to flee.