Today, we're going to be talking about rabbits. (Don't worry, I'm not going to 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 the year it is, that's a pretty good spot to start.
A few years ago, Cadbury Chocolates was running a series of TV commercials 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 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.
Personally, I have a soft spot in my heart for ol' Bugs. Bob Clampett created the cartoon character Bugs Bunny for Warner Brothers after seeing Clark Gable munching a carrot in the 1934 movie "It Happened One Night."
Ol' BB even won an Oscar himself, in 1958 for the best short subject, for "Knighty Knight Bugs." For years, his voice was done by Mel Blanc (who, ironically, was allergic to carrots).
When you mention "wascally wabbits," around my parents' house, you'd get set down and told the story of the bunnies that got into my mother's garden in Detroit.
It seems she once had problems with a bunny that one summer continuously 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.[[In-content Ad]]
