Rabbits
Over Easter, every one of us is confronted by chocolate bunnies. Rabbits are the most innocent of animals.
The other night at 4am, the lights awakened me when they suddenly went on outside my study. I got up to see who or what had set off the movement sensor. Outside our plate glass door to the courtyard, I discovered, sitting on our doormat, a teenage rabbit. Because of the light he could not see me on the inside, even though if I could have put my hand through the glass I could have picked him up.
Totally unaware of my presence, and not bothered by the light, he set about his morning toilet. One by one he cleaned each foot, then each ear to the tips, then his whiskers, then his chest. When he had completed his toilet, he rubbed his eyes and nose, as to wake up. It was one of the most beautiful sights I had ever seen.
I haven’t seen any sign of anything he has been eating, but I do not begrudge him anything, and most of our vegetables and other plants can do with a trim.
There is only one concern. How did he get through the fox proof boundary fence with its ‘rabbit proof’ wire? And is there another one also able to get in? One rabbit is beautiful. Two is too horrendous to contemplate. The wild brown rabbits were brought to Australia on the First Fleet in 1788. Seventy years later, wild rabbits were first let loose on the Australian bush in 1859, in Victoria.
By 1886, they had reached the Queensland-NSW border. By 1910 they were generally widespread across the southern two-thirds of the continent. They now numbered in the millions. They were able to live in Australia’s lush eastern coastal belt, and in the Australia’s driest deserts. They have spread even to the islands of Antarctica. They became by the 1940’s our nation’s most expensive and destructive pest.
They ate the grass, denuded the paddocks, ringbarked the trees, eroded the soil, and competed for the available water. Their availability in such abundance provided food for feral cats, dingoes, foxes and wild dogs which also multiplied.
Rabbits went from farm to farm, digging their warrens. Rabbit-proof fences criss-crossed the continent, and surrounded every paddock. Wheat and wool farmers were saved by a virus: the Myxomatosis (commonly called ‘myxo’) a disease which affects rabbits. About 500 million died from 1950 on and the rabbit plague seemed to be over. But soon it was noticed that most of the remaining rabbits acquired partial immunity to the virus.
Then a new virus which was being trialed on a South Australian island, in 1996 escaped over the water to the mainland carried by insects blown by the wind. So Rabbit calicivirus was introduced into the rabbit population. It was seen as the Farmer’s saviour. It is anticipated it will continue to spread throughout most of Australia occupied by rabbits. It is spread via the saliva and nasal secretions and contaminated excreta of infected rabbits. It is spread by either direct contact with infected rabbits, or indirectly in green feed. There is no known therapy to reverse the disease.
One of my grand-daughters has a pet rabbit, with floppy ears. She takes it inside every night for cuddles and during the day it lives in a Taj Mahal (it cost almost as much!), which is insect-and-mosquito proof to save it from the virus. It is not allowed contact with any other creature, especially another rabbit. With its vaccinations, micro chipping and sterilization surgery, that one rabbit has cost a fortune.
So our teenage rabbit, is still hopping round the orchard and vegetable patch leaving his Easter eggs. He’s OK, so long as he doesn’t get a girl friend.
Rev The Hon. Dr Gordon Moyes, A.C., M.L.C.
