Today we're going to be talking about rabbits. (Don't worry, I won't launch into a long tale about Volkswagens.)
I'm talking about bunnies. You know, the little bundles of fur with long ears that hop to and fro?
Any time you mention rabbits, the first thought that comes to mind is the Easter Bunny; and considering what time of year it is, that's a pretty good spot to start.
A few years ago, Cadbury Chocolates was running a series of TV com-mercials in which all sorts of animals were auditioning for the role of Easter Bunny. Animals trying out seemed to think that all you had to do was tie a pair of outlandish ears to your skull, then wiggle your nose, and you had the part.
Wrong, wrong, wrong.
As any little kid can tell you, the Easter Bunny is magic. Sometime very early Easter morning, the bunny is busy out in the yard (although he's been known to get into houses and apartments, too) hiding his brightly colored eggs for little ones to find.
Then, Easter morning, little children all over the land are out hunting through bushes and around the hedges of the yard; often they find baskets of candy and other Easter treats.
Another famous bunny that's sometimes confused with the Easter Bunny is Peter Rabbit. Peter - and his trials in attempting to escape from Mr. McGregor's garden - is a tale that was first told in the early 1900s by Beatrix Potter, to entertain some of her little friends.
Potter gave Peter three siblings, Flopsy, Mopsy and Cottontail. And then, as her little children's tales increased in popularity, a cousin, Benjamin Bunny, was added to the fictional forest menagerie. (My partner is a total Beatrix Potter aficionado; consequently, there are books, illustra-tions and stuffed toy bunnies around the house. "Well," she says, "all the teddy bears have to have company.")
Personally, I have a soft spot in my heart for ol' Bugs. Bob Clampett created the cartoon character, Bugs Bunny, for Warner Bros. after seeing Clark Gable munching a carrot in the Oscar-winning 1934 movie "It Hap-pened One Night."
Ol' BB even won an Oscar him-self, in 1958 for the best short subject, for "Knighty Knight Bugs." For years his voice was done by Mel Blanc (who was allergic to carrots).
When you mention "wascally wabbits," around my parents' house, you'll get set down and told the story of the bunnies that got into my mother's garden in Detroit.
It seems that one summer she had problems with a bunny that kept eating her flowers. To remedy this situation, she bought a live trap that the little rabbit would set off, steal the bait from and then escape.
To fix the trap, my father carried it with him down to one of the machine shops in the Carolinas he stopped at. There, a bunch of engineers fussed over it for two days. They then shipped it back to Detroit, and she finally caught the bunny. Then she drove 50 miles out of town to release it on farmlands.
The total cost of eliminating that rabbit from my mother's garden, if you were paying for time and talent, had to be several hundred dollars.
Now, aren't you glad that you've only got the Easter Bunny and a few chocolate eggs to worry about?
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