Adventures in Bunnies

Oryctotagus cuniculus

(domestic rabbit)

  Once upon a time, in a land very near where I now sit, there lived two young boys. The boys were close friends and shared many good times. One such time, or rather, series of good times, was the annual outing to the nearest Agricultural Fair. In our case, this was the State Agricultural Fair as our county was actually too rural to support such an undertaking as an Agricultural County Fair. It was at one of those yearly farm get-togethers when my friend Johnny, who has since passed on, saw something that had him all excited and eagerly yanking me to one of the animal display barns. 

  As we entered the hay-perfumed sweetness of barn dwellers, I finally managed to get him to stop long enough to enable me to take several deep breaths of that wonderful smell that many farm kids learn to savor like a rose gardener smells her roses. Then, at a somewhat more sedate pace, he pushed me ahead of him through the thick crowds that always appeared on Saturdays. After passing through the length of the building, he stopped pushing me and excitedly asked what I thought. 

   I immediately began to tell him in no uncertain terms what I thought of his current mental state, however, I never got but one sentence out before he yelled over my voice, "No, no, no! There, there, there! We could do that!!" As I looked to where his extended finger was shakily pointing I saw stacks of neat, roomy, cages. On closer inspection it was clear there were plump, furry, animals inside in pairs. "RABBITS!", he shouted excitedly. Then he went on to recite a rather longish spiel that he must have gotten from the little blond girl tending to the bunnies.

   Before long it became clear that he had in his mind to enlist me into a partnership as farmers of rabbits. To say I was reluctant would be a gross understatement. Still, he persisted, rambling on  for several minutes between deep gulps of air until, seemingly spent, he went toward the little girl. I mean little as smaller physically than our brawny 12 year old boyish frames. At least that's how we thought of ourselves as compared to the townies due mostly to healthy appetites supplemented by hours of farm work daily. She looked up at his approach and he went all quiet like & she got a pinkish glow. Not surprisingly, years later they wed and together raised two fine sons who now work in the airline industry as cargo pilots and Dot still lives in their North Carolina 'retirement cottage'.

   Before long, they came over to me and Johnny introduced her as Dot, from a town not too far from ours, but not easily accessible from our town without driving along a long dog-leg shaped route. Seemingly suddenly struck dumb, he nudged her gently and nodded, whereupon she started telling me all the ins and outs of her rabbit raising business and how her father marketed them in the city when he delivered hogs to the meat packing company there. Although I was hesitant, Johnny was completely taken by the idea, very likely as a result of 12-year-old male hormones reacting to Dot's smile.

   Telling him I'd think on it while trying to figure out a way to get his mind off the possibility of rabbity riches and good times ahead, I led back toward the rides on the midway. But he had plans, plans far too important to be put aside just for carnival rides. Seems he'd even discussed it with his dad, who told him if he could raise the money he'd give him the use of the old goat shed attached to his barn. Now I saw my part in the plan! He knew full well that I'd been saving up to purchase a transistor radio to listen to at night. We had no electricity on the farms and my Uncle R was usually occupied listening to the Red Sox games on the old battery powered unit we had. Transistor radios were fairly new then and had seemed to me a perfect way to have access to the stories played out each evening on the local station in the little city nearby. John's plan was to join forces with him providing place, cages, and food and I'd be the purchaser of the bunnies. I resisted until Sunday, when he finally convinced me to use some of my radio money to buy three females and a male from his newly found blonde friend.

   Move forward in time about eight months, our operation was doing really well. We had loads of critters and were breeding as fast as the market would absorb. I had my money back and all looked rosy. Until, that is, came word from Johnny's dad that he was stopping all meat raising operations and most of the dairy too as he'd been offered a job at the local saw mill. The money was more than farming, the work steady, and the pay as sawyer was good. Still, we persevered, thinking up various ways to get the critters to the packing house. The local meat shop took some, but we were breeding far more than he could handle. Then the cold hand of reality hit as we realized that without the various feeds from his dad we'd have to buy our own. This, plus the cost of having another farmer cart our goods to market, sounded the death knell for our profit margin. 

   Well, we kept on wishing and hoping for awhile, until we realized that rabbits were really, really, really good at multiplying. Even our efforts to segregate the males fell to ill fortune. One little fella had himself a grand old time until we caught on to the fact our gals were expecting again. Disaster! As the population rapidly started to fill the place we decided action was sorely needed. 

   Being boys and somewhat too clever for our own good, we hatched a plan. Not having buyers for our brood, we decided killing them was unnecessary and crude. Our brilliant(?) plan? In the lake abutting the farms to the south was a mid-sized island with nothing on it but grass, brush, and a smattering of trees. That became the destination for our boatloads of caged rabbits until all were safely deposited on the island. To our way of thinking, we were happy, bunnies were happy, all was right in the world again.

   Until, one late summer afternoon a game warden and a Fish & Wildlife Department truck with two men in it pulled into our yard. Seems they were stuck with a problem concerning the overpopulation of the island with rabbits and needed F's road for easier access. For some reason, this rabbit crowd was unacceptable to them. Well, my Uncles suggested a way to solve the problem. Put foxes and/or coyotes on the island to eat the bunny excess. And so the island, by now called 'Rabbit Island' by everyone around, got a fresh injection of fox and coyotes. Problem solved.

   Except, it seems that both predators aren't shy about swimming to the place once the island inhabitants somehow alerted them of the bountiful bunny supply. By spring, the State Wildlife folks were back, but no longer taking suggestions. Seems they no longer had a bunny problem, but a canine problem as apparently a rabid animal had gotten to the island before developing the fear of water. Now the worry was that the disease would spread ashore as eagles, owls, & hawks were now present in high numbers, having spotted rabbits, fox, and coyote snacks for the grabbing.

   Finally, somebody at the headquarters of the Warden Service made the blanket decision that all island critters must be either trapped or shot and destroyed to prevent a rabies epidemic. This apparently was a costly undertaking if the local gossip was to be believed. John and I kept a very low profile during all this and let the F & W guys think all the trouble was begun by a few rabbits that 'must have crossed over the ice' and infested the place. That explanation was fine with us. We were a bit sad how it ended, but even today few know why the place is referred to as 'Rabbit Island' since there aren't any rabbits there. Just a few birds. 

   Seems we young lads had made a lasting impression after all. Until next we meet, be well and take care.

So cute too! 

And now, the rest of the story......

I don't mean this to be taken as a mean-spirited, sour grapes, type post. It's just that history is written by the victorious, which means it often gets distorted far from the factual accounts of what happened. This has been, and continues to be, one of the great failings of schools the world over. The result is even greater misunderstandings between different groups about the true history as told by those of ALL sides who lived it.

The Final Insult?(no, just one of many)        


 The Real Thanksgiving Story(and related information about the Settlers)

(As quoted from: The Hidden History of Massachusetts)
Much of America's understanding of the early relationship between the Indian and the European is conveyed through the story of Thanksgiving. Proclaimed a holiday in 1863 by Abraham Lincoln, this fairy tale of a feast was allowed to exist in the American imagination pretty much untouched until 1970, the 350th anniversary of the landing of the Pilgrims. That is when Frank B. James, president of the Federated Eastern Indian League, prepared a speech for a Plymouth banquet that exposed the Pilgrims for having committed, among other crimes, the robbery of the graves of the Wampanoags. He wrote:

"We welcomed you, the white man, with open arms, little knowing that it was the beginning of the end; that before 50 years were to pass, the Wampanoag would no longer be a free people."

But white Massachusetts officials told him he could not deliver such a speech and offered to write him another. Instead, James declined to speak, and on Thanksgiving Day hundreds of Indians from around the country came to protest. It was the first National Day of Mourning, a day to mark the losses Native Americans suffered as the early settlers prospered. This true story of "Thanksgiving" is what whites did not want Mr. James to tell.

What Really Happened in Plymouth in 1621? According to a single-paragraph account in the writings of one Pilgrim, a harvest feast did take place in Plymouth in 1621, probably in mid-October, but the Indians who attended were not even invited. Though it later became known as "Thanksgiving," the Pilgrims never called it that. And amidst the imagery of a picnic of interracial harmony is some of the most terrifying bloodshed in New World history.

The Pilgrim crop had failed miserably that year, but the agricultural expertise of the Indians had produced twenty acres of corn, without which the Pilgrims would have surely perished. The Indians often brought food to the Pilgrims, who came from England ridiculously unprepared to survive and hence relied almost exclusively on handouts from the overly generous Indians-thus making the Pilgrims the western hemisphere's first class of welfare recipients. The Pilgrims invited the Indian sachem Massasoit to their feast, and it was Massasoit, engaging in the tribal tradition of equal sharing, who then invited ninety or more of his Indian brothers and sisters-to the annoyance of the 50 or so ungrateful Europeans. No turkey, cranberry sauce or pumpkin pie was served; they likely ate duck or geese and the venison from the 5 deer brought by Massasoit. In fact, most, if notall, of the food was most likely brought and prepared by the Indians, whose 10,000-year familiarity with the cuisine of the region had kept the whites alive up to that point.

The Pilgrims wore no black hats or buckled shoes-these were the silly inventions of artists hundreds of years since that time. These lower-class Englishmen wore brightly colored clothing, with one of their church leaders recording among his possessions "1 paire of greene drawers." Contrary to the fabricated lore of storytellers generations since, no Pilgrims prayed at the meal, and the supposed good cheer and fellowship must have dissipated quickly once the Pilgrims brandished their weaponry in a primitive display of intimidation. What's more, the Pilgrims consumed a good deal of home brew. In fact, each Pilgrim drank at least a half gallon of beer a day, which they preferred even to water. This daily inebriation led their governor, William Bradford, to comment on his people's "notorious sin," which included their "drunkenness and uncleanliness" and rampant "sodomy"...

The Pilgrims of Plymouth, The Original Scalpers.
Contrary to popular mythology the Pilgrims were no friends to the local Indians. They were engaged in a ruthless war of extermination against their hosts, even as they falsely posed as friends. Just days before the alleged Thanksgiving love-fest, a company of Pilgrims led by Myles Standish actively sought to chop off the head of a local chief. They deliberately caused a rivalry between two friendly Indians, pitting one against the other in an attempt to obtain "better intelligence and make them both more diligent." An 11-foot-high wall was erected around the entire settlement for the purpose of keeping the Indians out.


Any Indian who came within the vicinity of the Pilgrim settlement was subject to robbery, enslavement, or even murder. The Pilgrims further advertised their evil intentions and white racial hostility, when they mounted five cannons on a hill around their settlement, constructed a platform for artillery, and then organized their soldiers into four companies-all in preparation for the military destruction of their friends the Indians.

Pilgrim Myles Standish eventually got his bloody prize. He went to the Indians, pretended to be a trader, then beheaded an Indian man named Wituwamat. He brought the head to Plymouth, where it was displayed on a wooden spike for many years, according to Gary B. Nash, "as a symbol of white power." Standish had the Indian man's young brother hanged from the rafters for good measure. From that time on, the whites were known to the Indians of Massachusetts by the name "Wotowquenange," which in their tongue meant cutthroats and stabbers.

Who Were the "Savages"?
The myth of the fierce, ruthless Indian savage lusting after the blood of innocent Europeans must be vigorously dispelled at this point. In actuality, the historical record shows that the very opposite was true.

Once the European settlements stabilized, the whites turned on their hosts in a brutal way. The once amicable relationship was breeched again and again by the whites, who lusted over the riches of Indian land. A combination of the Pilgrims' demonization of the Indians, the concocted mythology of Eurocentric historians, and standard Hollywood propaganda has served to paint the gentle Indian as a tomahawk-swinging savage endlessly on the warpath, lusting for the blood of the God-fearing whites.

But the Pilgrims' own testimony obliterates that fallacy. The Indians engaged each other in military contests from time to time, but the causes of "war," the methods, and the resulting damage differed profoundly from the European variety:
> Indian "wars" were largely symbolic and were about honor, not about territory or extermination.
>"Wars" were fought as domestic correction for a specific act and were ended when correction was achieved. Such action might better be described as internal policing. The conquest or destruction of whole territories was a European concept.
> Indian "wars" were often engaged in by family groups, not by whole tribal groups, and would involve only the family members.
> A lengthy negotiation was engaged in between the aggrieved parties before escalation to physical confrontation would be sanctioned. Surprise attacks were unknown to the Indians.
> It was regarded as evidence of bravery for a man to go into "battle" carrying no weapon that would do any harm at a distance-not even bows and arrows. The bravest act in war in some Indian cultures was to touch their adversary and escape before he could do physical harm.
> The targeting of non-combatants like women, children, and the elderly was never contemplated. Indians expressed shock and repugnance when the Europeans told, and then showed, them that they considered women and children fair game in their style of warfare.
> A major Indian "war" might end with less than a dozen casualties on both sides. Often, when the arrows had been expended the "war" would be halted. The European practice of wiping out whole nations in bloody massacres was incomprehensible to the Indian.

According to one scholar, "The most notable feature of Indian warfare was its relative innocuity." European observers of Indian wars often expressed surprise at how little harm they actually inflicted. "Their wars are far less bloody and devouring than the cruel wars of Europe," commented settler Roger Williams in 1643. Even Puritan warmonger and professional soldier Capt. John Mason scoffed at Indian warfare: "[Their] feeble manner...did hardly deserve the name of fighting." Fellow warmonger John Underhill spoke of the Narragansetts, after having spent a day "burning and spoiling" their country: "no Indians would come near us, but run from us, as the deer from the dogs." He concluded that the Indians might fight seven years and not kill seven men. Their fighting style, he wrote, "is more for pastime, than to conquer and subdue enemies."

All this describes a people for whom war is a deeply regrettable last resort. An agrarian people, the American Indians had devised a civilization that provided dozens of options all designed to avoid conflict--the very opposite of Europeans, for whom all-out war, a ferocious bloodlust, and systematic genocide are their apparent life force. Thomas Jefferson--who himself advocated the physical extermination of the American Indian--said of Europe, "They [Europeans] are nations of eternal war. All their energies are expended in the destruction of labor, property and lives of their people."

By the mid 1630s, a new group of 700 even holier Europeans calling themselves Puritans had arrived on 11 ships and settled in Boston-which only served to accelerate the brutality against the Indians.

In one incident around 1637, a force of whites trapped some seven hundred Pequot Indians, mostly women, children, and the elderly, near the mouth of the Mystic River. Englishman John Mason attacked the Indian camp with "fire, sword, blunderbuss, and tomahawk." Only a handful escaped and few prisoners were taken-to the apparent delight of the Europeans:

To see them frying in the fire, and the streams of their blood quenching the same, and the stench was horrible; but the victory seemed a sweet sacrifice, and they gave praise thereof to God.

This event marked the first actual Thanksgiving. In just 10 years 12,000 whites had invaded New England, and as their numbers grew they pressed for all-out extermination of the Indian. Euro-diseases had reduced the population of the Massachusett nation from over 24,000 to less than 750; meanwhile, the number of European settlers in Massachusetts rose to more than 20,000 by 1646.

By 1675, the Massachusetts Englishmen were in a full-scale war with the great Indian chief of the Wampanoags, Metacomet. Renamed "King Philip" by the white man, Metacomet watched the steady erosion of the lifestyle and culture of his people as European-imposed laws and values engulfed them.


In 1671, the white man had ordered Metacomet to come to Plymouth to enforce upon him a new treaty, which included the humiliating rule that he could no longer sell his own land without prior approval from whites. They also demanded that he turn in his community's firearms. Marked for extermination by the merciless power of a distant king and his ruthless subjects, Metacomet retaliated in 1675 with raids on several isolated frontier towns. Eventually, the Indians attacked 52 of the 90 New England towns, destroying 13 of them. The Englishmen ultimately regrouped, and after much bloodletting defeated the great Indian nation, just half a century after their arrival on Massachusetts soil. Historian Douglas Edward Leach describes the bitter end:

The ruthless executions, the cruel sentences...were all aimed at the same goal-unchallengeable white supremacy in southern New England. That the program succeeded is convincingly demonstrated by the almost complete docility of the local native ever since.

When Captain Benjamin Church tracked down and murdered Metacomet in 1676, his body was quartered and parts were "left for the wolves." The great Indian chief's hands were cut off and sent to Boston and his head went to Plymouth, where it was set upon a pole on the real first "day of public Thanksgiving for the beginning of revenge upon the enemy." Metacomet's nine-year-old son was destined for execution because, the whites reasoned, the offspring of the devil must pay for the sins of their father. The child was instead shipped to the Caribbean to spend his life in slavery.

As the Holocaust continued, several official Thanksgiving Days were proclaimed. Governor Joseph Dudley declared in 1704 a "General Thanksgiving"-not in celebration of the brotherhood of man-but for [God's] infinite Goodness to extend His Favors...In defeating and disappointing... the Expeditions of the Enemy [Indians] against us, And the good Success given us against them, by delivering so many of them into our hands...

Just two years later one could reap a ££50 reward in Massachusetts for the scalp of an Indian-demonstrating that the practice of scalping was a European tradition. According to one scholar, "Hunting redskins became...a popular sport in New England, especially since prisoners were worth good money..."

Until next we meet, take care, stay well, and seek peace.