There'll Always Be An England

There'll always be an England,
And England shall be free
If England means as much to you
As England means to me.
-- Popular World War I Song

We certainly hope there will always be an England, particularly as long as it produces such riveting reading as the recent news article about the rampaging rabbit of Northumberland. The Guardian headline ran, "Armed guards hunt Were-rabbit of Mouldshaugh Lane" while the more staid London Times declared "No carrot is safe as monster rabbit goes on rampage." The Times goes on to report that

The creature leaves behind huge footprints, has diabolically shaped ears and is proving the biggest threat to cabbages in the history of the local allotment. So strong that it is able to pull leeks and turnips fully out of the soil, the black-and-brown rabbit has already demolished a market stall’s worth of Japanese onions, parsnips and spring carrots.

All this talk of diabolic rabbits calls to mind, of course, the Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog, that most fearsome beast from the 1975 cinematic masterpiece, Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
In case memory fails, here is a snippet of dialog:

TIM: Well, that's no ordinary rabbit!
ARTHUR: Ohh.
TIM: That's the most foul, cruel, and bad-tempered rodent you ever set eyes on!
ROBIN: You tit! I soiled my armour I was so scared!
TIM: Look, that rabbit's got a vicious streak a mile wide! It's a killer!
-- from Scene 21, Monty Python and the Holy Grail

There are other historical antecedents for vicious rabbits, of course. On April 29, 1979, President Jimmy Carter was "attacked by killer rabbit" although The Straight Dope argues that it was, in fact, a nutria, a far more aggressive rodent. We are reserving judgement, but it sure looks like a rabbit in the photos of the incident from the Jimmy Carter Library.

Furthermore, there is the distressing 21 Feb. 2006 report from Norway. Aftenposten, a Norwegian newspaper, reports that "A large and unusually bold hare was apparently so irritated when a dogsled team entered its territory that it went on the attack, in an otherwise peaceful forested area of northern Norway."

Still interested in killer rabbits? You might wish to see Night of the Lepus, the classic 1972 horror film about giant mutant rabbits: "They were born that tragic moment when science made its great mistake... now from behind the shroud of night they come, a scuttling, shambling horde of creatures destroying all in their path."

Rabbit image from Wikipedia entry on the Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog.