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We also have rabbits, we started with a handful and now we have them by the truck load. They breed and eat and then they breed and eat. In between they dig holes of all sizes, sometimes shallow test burrows or single family burrows, when they really get going they expand into warrens that resemble rabbit size suburbs. On our farm they have teamed up with the wombats by digging their burrows into the sides of wombat holes. Wombats and bunnies are formidable excavators and now we have areas looking more like the Somme than paddock.
Blame the hunting mad Thomas Austin for importing 24 rabbits in 1859, however, the first fleeters were ahead of him- luckily they ate all their rabbits faster than they bred because the convicts ran out of rabbit stew fairly early, the settlement was starving after the first year.
By 1950 there was a grand plan to get rid of the rabbits, it was a world first, we had a special virus called Myxomatosis and it was going to wipe those 'wascally wabbits' off the map, and it almost did --for a while.
When I was 12 my pet black rabbit called Pookey who spent most of his life in domestic bliss living with the humans in our family home, was infected with Myxomatosis and died an awful death in his box in the kitchen, I was devastated.
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| one little burrow |
Maybe we should feel proud of our rabbits after all they are responsible for one of Australia's greatest infrastructure projects, one to rival the great wall of China - thanks to rabbits we have the mighty Rabbit Proof Fence stretching north and south in Western Australia.
However, now it's time for this story to take a dark turn because the rabbits have decided to take over the farm and the farmers must fight to hold on. First it was the new trees along the drive way- undermined and ringbarked by the nibblers, then it was the beetroot crop, the citrus trees were next - ringbarked and the first crop of oranges nibbled and left to rot, then the Photinia hedge was reduced to a pile of sticks, the rhubarb disappeared over night, even the Agapanthus were not spared - dug up and randomly chewed.
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| Hobbits perhaps - no just rabbits |
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| 'once was a hedge' |
The rabbits have developed a taste for the exotic, they are becoming epicurean nibblers, if I had Thai basil, Okra and Vietnamese mint growing they would surely be adding them to their gourmet menu.
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| shrub reduced to a stick |
Drastic times call for drastic measures,
Claudius in Shakespeare's Hamlet paints a suitably dark image
"Diseases desperate grown
By desperate appliance are relieved"
