* The collective noun for a group of rabbits is most commonly a colony, but can also be referred to as a trace or a trip, which we much prefer.
19T
wo things guaranteed to make grown humans
say ‘Ooooooh’ out loud: watching fireworks
and spotting little white cottontails darting
back into hedgerows as you drive along
a country lane at dusk.
Rabbits may not be uncommon but spotting
one, or better still, a group*, is certain to lift the heart.
Perhaps it’s the sheer joy they exhibit themselves. Rabbits
are so cheery, there is a special word for the little twisty
jump they do when happy: binkying. It’s the rabbit
equivalent of clicking one’s heels.
Archaeologists think it was the Romans who brought us
rabbits since (cover your pet rabbit’s ears) butchered rabbit
bones have been found in Roman cooking pots. It was some
thousand years before they began to escape and breed in
the wild and not until the 1950s that they were culled.
And perhaps (in case any rabbits are still listening), the
less said about that, the better.
It’s testimony to the magical nature of rabbits that we
view a pest so favourably. The reading public has never
cooed in unison at the bravery of a bunch of rats, the way
we did over Hazel and Fiver in Richard Adams’ Watership
Down. And, oh, my ears and whiskers, we have never
delighted at the quirky charm of a cockroach like we did
over the White Rabbit in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
But it’s not that they are without fault. Rabbits, as Rattywisely tells Mole in The Wind in the Willows, are “a mixed
lot”. They have depth. There’s AA Milne’s Rabbit, who
refuses to answer the door to Pooh and considers himself
(and Owl) a little brainier than the other Hundred Acre
Wood inhabitants. But while we should find Rabbit’s
waspish ways irritating, he’s a favourite of many for his
go-getting spirit (Rabbit “never let things come to him but
always went and fetched them”) and his loyalty to his
friends. Rabbit refers to his hundreds of “friends and
relations” as an amorphous group, they number so many.
He’s not kidding: rabbits breed like, well, rabbits – up to
four times a year with as many as eight kittens in each litter.
And, of course, there is the rabbitiest of all rabbits, Peter
himself. Beatrix Potter made him naughty in the extreme,
disobeying his mother, stealing from Mr MacGregor’s
garden and generally being a bit of a one. Which is probably
why the bejacketed little rascal has been beloved of young
children with an eye for mischief for more than a century.
Potter kept pet rabbits herself, and it’s a lovely way to get
to know them better. They’re as magical up close as they
are zig-zagging away across a meadow. Watch their ears as
they swivel 270 degrees – they’re able to pinpoint the exact
location of a sound. More impressive still, see their facial
muscles clench almost imperceptibly to communicate with
each other in secret code – a fabulous mixture of cuteness
ILLUSTRATION: ZUZA MIŚKO and cunning. All the best wabbits are wascally, after all.
Words:IONA BOWERA
N
AP
PRECIATION OF R
ABB
ITSFRESH (^) | APRIL NATURE