Tell us about the rabbits

By Brendan O'Reilly My housemate Marilyn really likes her rabbit. I serve it up to her, and she chews away happily for hours. The vet put me onto it. Marilyn was grooming and scratching herself to bits. Because there are too many cats in the city, there is fierce territorial competition. The losers respond to defeat by licking their wounds. When they're covered in scabs and bald patches, we take 'em to the vet. Hormone tablets and injections are used a lot with good results. But Marilyn got in a really bad way, and the vet said get her some rabbit. As an apparently staple food for cats in their wild past, eating it could have a soothing effect. So it turned out. Marilyn's doing fine: no scabs or bald patches; wish I could say the same. But the rabbit in the freezer is running low and the rabbit industry is dead on its little rabbit feet. That bloody virus. I curse those useless bastards who cooked it up and let it go. Saw on the news how a South Australian rabbit exporter had gone bust already. Thirty people out of jobs. Like, Australia really needs this. I was at the Vic Market the other day. Rabbits were going cheap. Not really. They weren't going at all. In the Saturday morning crush there was room to swing a good-sized cat around the rabbit sellers' stalls. Nobody was going near them. Avoiding them like the plague, you could say. It's all for nothing. Myxo didn't eradicate the rabbit. Just killed trillions of 'em in the most horrific, gut-churning way imaginable. They came back, tougher than ever. A second strain of myxo was released years later. Did the trick. Billions more obscenely sick, blind, dying bunnies, oozing pus. They came back again. And now here we are. Don't tell me rabbit is still safe to eat. I just don't believe you. Why should I? There has been no debate about the ethics of viral warfare on animals. Generally, biological control has tended to rack up successes like the cane toad and the old woman who swallowed a fly, I don't know why. And now we have an economic, and probably an ecological, disaster on our hands. All those rabbits ate things and were eaten. Now they're gone. Other things that eat them are going to starve, or eat something else. Marsupials. Native birds. Chooks in the backyard. Each other. God knows. Nobody knows what will happen, but nobody really thinks it will be good. I demand an inquiry. A royal commission. A speech by the GG at the UN. A mini-series. Mate, this is such bad karma, y' know?