On the Road

Occasionally (very occasionally) I see a cute little brown bunny sitting statue-like on the side of the road. They always bring forth my vestigial Bambi Syndrome or whatever you call that ooooh and aaaah feeling that most small furry creatures seem to engender. I know full-well that I wouldn’t have that reaction if young Peter Rabbit and his friends had ever discovered the lettuces in Farmer Nyel’s garden. Certainly it was for similar transgressions, I got over wanting to be friendly with the Marauding Deer People long ago.

But… the bunnies are another matter entirely. A year or two ago we were leaving a friend’s home in Ocean Park and there, on the lawn across the street, was what appeared to be a rabbit convention. At least a half dozen little brown thumpers were sitting on the lawn eating something that the homeowners put out for them every evening. As I approached with my camera, they scampered off, obviously not tame enough for photo posing.

By Gordon Schoewe

But, I have no compunction about eating rabbit. (Tastes like chicken.) Not like our late friend Gordon Schoewe. Gordon had a ‘thing’ about rabbits. He collected all manner of rabbit statuary and ornaments and, of course, immortalized his signature rabbit Ambrose in a series of six-by-six paintings for the annual Columbia Pacific Heritage Museum’s auctions.

In the days that there was a place on the back road to buy butchered rabbits, we used to tease Gordon by inviting him to dinner and hinting that the entrée might be Lapin a La Cocotte (French Rabbit Stew) or some such. He was never amused, though he knew full well that we would never make good on the threat. Not if he were on our guest list, anyway, and not if we wished to remain on his list of friends!

The First Edition

Probably it was with all these bunny thoughts in the back of my mind that I recently re-read Richard Adams wonderful Watership Down adventure. I first read it back in the seventies when it came out and much of it has stuck with me over the years. Some of the ‘lapine language’ that Adams created, for instance, will be forever in my vocabulary – going “tharn” and time to “silfay” and the evil “hrududu” monsters – my mental vocabulary, anyway.

But, far beyond that, the book involves “epic themes” (say the critics) of the “timeless struggles between tyranny and freedom, reason and blind emotion, and the individual and the corporate state.”  Too, they say the story involves hero motifs and has invited comparisons to Homer’s Odyssey and Virgil’s Aeneid.

I don’t know about all that. I just think it’s a wonderful book – one of those that makes you wish you had known the author. If he is still living, Mr. Adams would be just sixteen years older than I – so maybe there’s still a chance. But probably only in my rabbitty dreams.