I got attacked by a killer rabbit the other day.  No, no – don’t laugh, I’m being serious here.  It was a dangerous affair.  To make matters worse, it wasn’t even a three foot hare that put the run on me, but a 5 inch baby – what my kids would call a cute, little bunny.  It was like a snippet from a Monty Python skit. I was completely taken off guard.

I was in my office, sitting at my desk, staring at a blank computer screen, pretending to be at work, when out of my window I saw a small, baby rabbit skitter past, in a quick hop scurry.  Seconds later the cute little gaffer was followed by a domestic cat, hot in pursuit, in a predator kind of way.  I bolted from my chair and made for the front door, screaming at the cat as I bounded down the front stairs and out onto the lawn.

Both baby bunny and feline attacker stopped and stared.  I stopped and stared back.  Then the cat took off in fear, and the tiny rabbit attacked.  He hopped towards me in a threatening way, chirping unkindly, and gnashing his front teeth.  What an ungrateful two-eared fur ball, I was thinking, as little Thumper had at my pant leg.  I shook him loose and returned to the house, as the vicious bunny pranced around menacingly in a victorious war dance.  “The pussy cat can have you next time,” I yelled over my shoulder, then slammed the door.

I’m not surprised there are baby bunnies about.  We had seen our first adult rabbit about our Muskoka home on Easter morning, of all days.  No, she was not carrying a goody basket – but apparently she was moving in.  Then there came another, and another and another – until soon five hares could be seen at any given time.  I felt I had fallen into the literary world of Watership Down.  They seemed to have taken up residence under our back deck, a whole waskly wabbit warren of them.

My wife and kids think their cute.  I find the situation a bit more disconcerting.  “I might be splitting hares here,” I tell my wife, “but you do know what a half dozen rabbits soon leads to, don’t you?  A dozen rabbits!  Then, there goes your garden.”

My always optimistic wife predicts that it will only be our dandelion crop that suffers by the rabbits’ presence.  For now anyway, they do seem to be concentrating on our lawn and not on the garden boxes – but the yellow, flowering weed does not seem to be disappearing at all.

I had read enough of those Beatrix Potter tales as a youngster to know that Peter Rabbit will soon become my nemesis – and I’ll be taking on the role of Farmer McGregor.  And nobody cheers for Mr. McGregor!  And, everybody just makes fun of Elmer Fudd.

Epilogue to my bunny tail – or is that a Lucky Rabbit Foot-note to my story?  I am not often proven right when it comes to debating things with my darling spouse, I’ll admit to that, but in this instance there was wisdom in my words.  The next day I heard a screech from the garden, and heard my wife threatening revenge – the rabbits were treating her garden plot like a salad bar.

“Must have been the ground hog or the ravens,” says my wife defensively, not wanting to ever admit an error in thinking.

Of course, I’m not so easily convinced – “Be vewy vewy quiet, I’m hunting wabbits.”

Rabbit stew anyone?