Wascally Wabbits
Some years ago, when I was commuting long distances before dawn, I hit a rabbit. Early as it was, in the instant before and after impact, a couple of things registered:
All this has come back in the last fortnight, when I have spooked a similar rabbit, or rabbits, in the woods along the bike path to Salem. This time, with broad daylight, full faculties and the benefit of a little homework, I could identify the creature with certainty. It is a domestic European rabbit, released or feral, the principal reason that the native cottontail is descending rapidly to endangered species status.
European rabbits are what people with more enthusiasm than brains buy for their children as pets, or as animate toys at Easter. Speaking from experience, they pall quickly as childrens' pets. Their saving grace, in captivity, is a rather short lifespan. I was devastated at 10 or 11 when our bunny died, but we were on to other things rather quickly.
Unfortunately many of these creatures, fragile as they are in cages, seem to thrive in the wild in North America. They are bigger and arguably more adaptable to suburbia than cottontails, they are gradually pushing the native bunny onto very shaky ground ecologically. and, of course, they breed, like, well, rabbits. I rather doubt there is much in the way of rabbit-to-rabbit conflict. It's the old story of one species out-competing the other.
But, as in the Everglades, where pythons are endangering every other life form,
the foreign bunnies got a boost: in the form of idiot parents. These people deal with their childrens' boredom with their pets by "turning them loose to fend for themselves." They deal similarly with all pets they can no longer afford. Thus we get thousands of sick, sometimes vulnerable animals in the wild. Sometimes we get wildly successful animals filling empty ecological niches (think beagle packs on Long Island), and sometimes we get imported animals who bully their way into occupied niches.
It's easier to think of Everglades pythons (and Asian carp* in the Mississippi) as ecological bad guys than it is to apply the same label to those cute widdle wabbits. But they are just as destructive, and they all have the same vector: stupid people. In a just world, the feral bunnies would attract ravening packs of feral beagles, who would chase the stupid former pet owners into swamps where they would be swallowed, whole and slowly, by pythons.
But it's not a just world, so we must wait in patience for the evolution of Killer Rabbits of Caerbannog to even the score. Who, indeed, is wascally?
*Sooner or later, rapacious American fisherfolk will figure out that Asian carp is tasty. They will all move to the Mississippi Valley and wipe out the carp problem in a decade or two. This is unlikely to work with either bunnies or pythons.
- It was awfully big to be a cottontail rabbit, New England's default wild bunny
- Framingham is awfully far south for it to be a snowshoe rabbit (aka varying hare)
All this has come back in the last fortnight, when I have spooked a similar rabbit, or rabbits, in the woods along the bike path to Salem. This time, with broad daylight, full faculties and the benefit of a little homework, I could identify the creature with certainty. It is a domestic European rabbit, released or feral, the principal reason that the native cottontail is descending rapidly to endangered species status.
European rabbits are what people with more enthusiasm than brains buy for their children as pets, or as animate toys at Easter. Speaking from experience, they pall quickly as childrens' pets. Their saving grace, in captivity, is a rather short lifespan. I was devastated at 10 or 11 when our bunny died, but we were on to other things rather quickly.
Unfortunately many of these creatures, fragile as they are in cages, seem to thrive in the wild in North America. They are bigger and arguably more adaptable to suburbia than cottontails, they are gradually pushing the native bunny onto very shaky ground ecologically. and, of course, they breed, like, well, rabbits. I rather doubt there is much in the way of rabbit-to-rabbit conflict. It's the old story of one species out-competing the other.
But, as in the Everglades, where pythons are endangering every other life form,
the foreign bunnies got a boost: in the form of idiot parents. These people deal with their childrens' boredom with their pets by "turning them loose to fend for themselves." They deal similarly with all pets they can no longer afford. Thus we get thousands of sick, sometimes vulnerable animals in the wild. Sometimes we get wildly successful animals filling empty ecological niches (think beagle packs on Long Island), and sometimes we get imported animals who bully their way into occupied niches.
It's easier to think of Everglades pythons (and Asian carp* in the Mississippi) as ecological bad guys than it is to apply the same label to those cute widdle wabbits. But they are just as destructive, and they all have the same vector: stupid people. In a just world, the feral bunnies would attract ravening packs of feral beagles, who would chase the stupid former pet owners into swamps where they would be swallowed, whole and slowly, by pythons.
But it's not a just world, so we must wait in patience for the evolution of Killer Rabbits of Caerbannog to even the score. Who, indeed, is wascally?
*Sooner or later, rapacious American fisherfolk will figure out that Asian carp is tasty. They will all move to the Mississippi Valley and wipe out the carp problem in a decade or two. This is unlikely to work with either bunnies or pythons.
posted by Uncle | 00:48
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