Confessions of a rabbit fancier
You may dote on cats (for reasons best known to yourself) or harbor a passion for domesticated canines ... but I love rabbits. Instead of all that meowing and barking, give me a bunny fricasseed, baked or stewed. Such fare is my version of living off the land. You see, I come from a long line of rabbiters. For most of this century my farming forbears supplemented the family larder with rabbit flesh. We would still go a lamb roast on occasion, but with the young at home rabbit tucker was always on hand. Such a ready source of protein got us through the Great Depression I am told, and later all my holidays on family farms were spent rabbiting. I may be just a suburban boy but put me among the warrens and I go native. My enthusiasm for these critters has never waned.
Oryctolagus cuniculus — to give the wild rabbit its name — has been blessed with a rich legacy in French and Spanish cuisine. Cooked right — in a paella, for instance — it tastes great. Unfortunately, the rabbit's popularity on the dinner table has slipped since the mid-1950s when up to 45 million rabbits were commercially harvested. Nowadays, instead of eating them, we are more likely to be wearing them as it takes around a dozen rabbit pelts to make a felt hat like my Akubra. Many of my relatives gave up on rabbit flesh when the disease myxomatosis was introduced into the local population. The thought that their table bunny may have suffered from swollen, pussy eyes before harvest put them off their tucker. "They're all full of myxo", they'd say. Despite the initial impact of the epidemic, rabbit numbers recovered while the disdain of the rabbit as food has only grown. (This is perhaps why no franchise has been launched marketing Kentucky Fried Rabbit. Personally, I blame the chicken lobby — all those self-important chooks big noting themselves.) We have become a nation of rabbit haters; in most states it is illegal to keep rabbits as pets. And now the CSIRO is waging a biological war on the bunnies of Australia. As I write the rabbit calicivirus is travelling north after it escaped from a quarantine station in South Australia last month. The rabbits of Australia are in for a rough season this Xmas. Many will not see New Year. While nine rabbits graze about the same amount of pasture as one sheep and strip vegetation cover — destroying seedlings and perennial shrubs — I believe rabbits deserve better than the anonymous and cheapened death currently being metered out to them through this inept intervention. By tomorrow there will be thousands more dead rabbits littering Australia, their carcasses visited by blow-flies and carrion eaters while their regular predators — feral cats, foxes and dingoes — switch their diet to local marsupials. Since I cannot survive on grass, and nine rabbits can graze the same amount of pasture as one sheep, feed me the meat so raised. Feed me lamb and free-range bunnies, dress me in wool and felt. Together we could eat our way through the warrens of this land. Waste not want not, I say. With up to eight litters per year, Mum Rabbit won't let us starve. So give bunnies the respect they deserve. Let's kill them by all means, but at least we should offer them a worthy death by drawing pleasure and sustenance from the slaughter, and once dead, eat them.
Dave Riley