Said Rusty in the comments to last night's café. He was looking at the sunrise photo I'd taken that morning.
And Meade had made a similar comment about the previous morning's sunrise photo. He commented pictorially, by text, picking out the detail...
... with the caption "The Easter Bunny."
It made me wonder — what are the horror stories involving rabbits?
There's Frank, the figure in a rabbit costume in the movie "Donnie Darko." There's the Black Rabbit of Inlé in "Watership Down." There's a 1972 movie, "Night of the Lepus," which sounds like the rabbit version of "The Birds." And there's "Wallace & Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit":
Something absurd about a terrorizing rabbit. Yes, I know: Jimmy Carter.
ADDED: Lots of great material in "The Tales of the Killer Rabbit: Cowardice, Violence and Bunnies, from the Middle Ages to Modern Times." Excerpt:
The Killer Ra[b]bit scene, one of the most epic episodes of Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones’ 1975 film Monty Python and the Holy Grail, seems to be directly inspired by medieval occurrences. Among them would be the Allegory of Cowardice sculpture found on the central portal of Notre Dame of Amiens (c. 1220). In both cases, knights face a fierce and bloodthirsty creature: a rabbit. Beyond the apparently direct iconographic link, many other associations arise when confronting this gothic quatrefoil (a four-leaves clover pattern) and the Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog’s cave (Fig. 1 & 2).
That article called attention to the White Rabbit — in "Alice in Wonderland" (and that Jefferson Airplane song) — and to the “Die Geschichte von dem wilden Jäger” ("The Story of the Wild Huntsman"), in Der Struwwelpeter (Shockheaded Peter), both of which I read quite intensely when I was a child. Excerpt:
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38 comments:
The Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog. Disposed of only with the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch.
Jimmy Carter famously survived an attack from an aquatic rabbit.
You're forgetting the evil Rabbitt in Monty Python.
Irontail in Here Comes Peter Cottontail. Technically not a horror story, some of those children's shows were still nightmare fuel.
The facade of Notre Dame has a hare chasing a man. The original "Killer rabbitt".
Kill the wabbit. (too cliche'?)
I came here for the Killer Rabbit from Monty Python, and had the Carter bunny attack as backup, and now must go to my third choice. Little Bunny Foo Foo. Objectively pure evil.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYJv6EVBM5o
The version my kids taught me oh so long ago had Little Bunny Foo Foo "bopping" them on their heads.
General Woundwart in Watership Down, the book that taught me all I know both right and wrong, true and untrue, about Rabbits.
Harvey is my favorite rabbit
"Night of the Lepus"... A real horror (or is it a travesty?) of a horror movie about killer rabbits, specifically killer rabbits the size of duallie crew cabs.
I was attempting to extricate a rabbit from a basement window well using a snow shovel through the partially opened window. Trapped, the fight or flight instinct must have kicked in and the beast viciously lunged at me feet-first, raised like talons, teeth bared and blood in his eyes. Thankfully he bounced off the only partially opened window.
I irregularly stacked some boxes and he made his way out.
Or was it more than a tavsity?
I've noticed the rabbits are very large this year... which seems like a setup for "Night of the Lepus."
Hormones in the water will do that.
At last he stumbled at the well
Head over ears, in he fell
Head over ears?
That rabbit is smoking. Pure evil.
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Madison to be born?
JSM
Just so we're all clear, The Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog is the proper technical name for the so called "Monty Python rabbit".
Oh I do wish we had film of Jimma Carter beating that "killer rabbit" with his boat paddle! "Hare" has passed out of fashionable use, apparently, although they are born with fur and open eyes, putting them a hair ahead of bunnies in development after birth. And with their passing from common use has gone the "hare-brained scheme" and the "hare-lip." The latter has been supplanted by the dry medical term "cleft palate," which confused me as a youngster, because it left the state of the lip unsaid.
This is yet another year of voracious rabbits terrorizing my garden. My dog has learned that she cannot catch rabbits and doesn't even try anymore! It doesn't get more scary than that.
There's another rabbit-involved horror movie. "The Monster that Challenged the World" is about gigantic marine gastropods from the Paleozoic Era awakened in the 1950's SoCal citrus belt. Considering it co-stars Hans Conried, this isn't one of the more risible members of the genre. Imagine a young mother and her daughter trapped in a closet while outside a man-eating snail is methodically ripping the door apart, pretty tense even for the jaded. The setup for that sequence involves a chilly rabbit.
My dog has learned that she cannot catch rabbits and doesn't even try anymore!
I don't think my dogs will ever be that smart. There is nothing in the whole wide world they love more than scaring up a rabbit on our morning walks, and impotently but furiously chasing it until they come to the end of their lead.
Come to one of the premier lawbloggers in America to see what's being said about SCOTUS' unprecedented action in taking up a case that no lower court had ruled on yet, snatching it away from the 5th circuit moments before the circuit posted its response in the middle of the night.
But no. We're talking bunnies.
There was a Far Side or maybe Kliban cartoon of a distant rowed viking warship decorated with a bunny rabbit motif, with seaman in the foreground saying "I don't like the looks of this."
For Elmer Fudd, every Bugs Bunny cartoon is a horror story.
PBS confirms that "swamp rabbits" are real:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBvKq55uMOc
"They are the iron men of the rabbit world ..."
So, I guess Jimmy Carter wasn't the worst president after all.
Your tax dollars at work.
Don't forget about Bunnicula
Quaestor said...
“…Imagine a young mother and her daughter trapped in a closet while outside a man-eating snail is methodically ripping the door apart, pretty tense even for the jaded.”
They didn’t have any salt?
There is a photo of the Carter rabbit incident. And Carter's actions to defend himself against the potentially violent water-born bunny should have been a lesson to him in foreign affairs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Carter_rabbit_incident
Don't forget Bun-Bun
The "Bun-Bun" scene in John Ringo’s Council Wars series refers to a character inspired by Bun-Bun, the mini-lop rabbit from the webcomic Sluggy Freelance. In the series, specifically in Emerald Sea (Book 2), Bun-Bun appears as a genetically engineered, fire-breathing, flying rabbit used as a weapon. The scene is notable for its dark humor, described as “flying fiery bunny death,” where these creatures wreak havoc in a fantastical, post-apocalyptic setting.
Wish I could find the exact scene I'm thinking of, ends with blood pouring from the scuppers of the enemy ship. A picture of the original Bun-Bun.
Our family dog used to chase Jack rabbits. And never caught any. Then, one day she caught one, and just ran it over, and came back to us, leaving a a dazed and confused rabbit. who then jack rabbitted away into the underbrush.
So it wasn't about getting a rabbit, it was just about the thrill of the chase.
DOW Falls 1,200 points Dollar Slides as Trump Renews Fed Attacks ~ WSJ
Trump wants a weaker dollar in terms of exchange rates but a strong dollar in terms of currency reserve. Hence the idea of blackmailing "allies" into purchasing 100 years Treasury bonds with zero interests.
Cake...eat...
The Fed cannot control the yield on the 10-year Treasury. In fact if the Fed were to lower the overnight rate now, under pressure from Trump, the 10-year rate could go up because of total loss of confidence and unanchoring of inflation expectations.
Politically speaking, it won't work. The only people who will buy Trump's excuse are hard partisans who already support him regardless of economic performance. Trump's soft support is going to put more weight on reality and results. They won't care about the "why" or "how", they will just care about whether their standard of living is getting better or worse.
We have the Loveland Frog[men] that live along the banks of the Little Miami River. No gore or killer tendencies, though.
https://northamericancryptids.com/loveland-frogmen/
There's also "Peter Rabbit - Tank Killer", a Sven Hassell parody.
Sven Hassell! I haven't thought about that master of war porn in decades.
As a teen we had an inside cat that escaped outside for a few days- and never tried to leave again. Was pretty beaten up when she returned of her own accord Shortly thereafter we watched a pet rabbit for a few days while they went off on a short trip. The cat showed genuine fear of that rabbit. Wouldn't go near it. Seems she must have encountered one in the wild.
In '77 we made a pilgrimage to Watership Down, which at that time had a suitably quaint pub, yclept as one might expect, with carved rabbits on its sign, from my sister home in Winchester. Far and away the best rabbit book, with every nuance of another more familiar species reflected in brilliant prose.
"Revenge of the Were-rabbit"
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