Dear Otus,
Easter is upon us and our daughter wants a pet bunny. I see them everywhere, but is it a good idea?
- Peter Lapin, Lonoke
Dear Peter,
It was wholly a pleasure to hear from you and to thank you for the opportunity to caution your fellow Arkansans about this growing menace.
The following information will disturb some readers. It will disgust and nauseate them, perhaps cause unsettling nightmares. Fair warning is given to the squeamish, women who may be pregnant, impressionable children and readers who find biological anomalies unsettling.
It has come to my attention that there is a growing number of individuals keeping rabbits as pets. I found this irrefutable information on the Internet and, if any should doubt it, there are even photographs from the House Rabbit Society at rabbit.org. The site tells us the motto of this odious outfit is “Buy a bunny a little time.” The Arkansas chapter is in Mount Ida, a hotbed of recondite lagomorphic activity.
I realize there are those who may not be concerned about this abomination against the natural order. These brainwashed individuals have been desensitized by a literary and entertainment industry that has inculcated generations to think of rabbits as warm and cuddly creatures worthy of our love and attention.
The Easter Bunny, Bugs Bunny, the Velveteen Rabbit, Brer Rabbit, Winnie the Pooh’s rabbit (named Rabbit) and Beatrix Potter’s Peter Rabbit and Benjamin Bunny are just a few of the examples that would turn these vicious creatures into household inhabitants.
Arkansas is cursed with two rabbit species - the ravenous eastern cottontail (Sylvilagus floridanus) and the slimy swamp rabbit ( Sylvilagus aquaticus). Both are nothing more than rats with long ears and short tails.
Rabbits may not technically be rodents, but they are still filthy, flea-infested, garbage-eating vermin with continuously growing, razor-sharp incisors that’d debone you in a heartbeat.
Click on the website’s article on rabbit aggression, “Ballistic Bunnies 101.” It’ll scare the spit out of you. There are even sick and twisted aberrant sociopaths who bring rabbits into a house already occupied by a cat. They force these two natural enemies to co-habitate, even to the point of sharing the same food and water dishes.
On the website, which claims its purpose is to “rescue and educate,” visitors can learn all about the care and feeding of the creatures.
There is even a detailed article instructing people on how to introduce a rabbit into a cat’s home. Here is some of the inflammatory text: “What seems an unlikely combination, given the predator-prey context that first comes to mind, is in fact a common and often rewarding match. The key is to remove that stereotype from your mind and, more importantly, from the environment.”
Cats and rabbits? As it is written in Hezekiah 65:25, “Thou may as well force the wolf to feed with the lamb, and the lion to eat straw like the bullock.”
Yes, rabbits are creatures of the warren. If you doubt me, just check out the savage brutality of Watership Down. It strips the cuddly facade from the whole rabbit conspiracy and shows the animals for the barbarous, feral monsters that they are.
Instead of demonizing the innocent gardener and mycologist Mr. McGregor, Potter would have been more socially responsible in showing how Peter Rabbit was a rogue produce thief with daddy issues who was hooked on chamomile tea. Granted, Mrs. McGregor had baked Peter’s father into a pie, but such was life in the harsh British countryside.
Finally, if you want to blame the current popularity of house rabbits to any particular incident, there are two - the seminal film Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and the 1998 Easter Egg Roll on the Clinton White House lawn.
The former introduced the most alluring animated female in movie history in Jessica Rabbit (“I’m not bad. I’m just drawn that way.”), and the latter provided young impressionable hormonal American males with the lascivious image of the president of the United States cavorting with a hot-to-hop furry lady bunny who would have been more at home in the Playboy Mansion than at the White House.
Home rabbit sales soared 387 percent in the decade between the two events. Coincidence? I think not.
Until next time, Kalaka suggests an Easter hamster or goldfish instead.
Disclaimer Fayetteville-born Otus the Head Cat’s award-winning column of humorous fabrication appears every Saturday. E-mail: [email protected]
HomeStyle, Pages 28 on 03/30/2013