JON DOWNES: Why Black Rabbits may be more important than you might otherwise think..

I read Gavin Lloyd Wilson's article about black rabbits with particular interest. It has been a subject that has been lurking at the back of my cryptozoological consciousness for some years. According to accepted wisdom, although rabbits were once native to Britain in the middle Pleistocene - as written by Sir Christopher Lever in his latest edition of The Naturalized Animals of Britain and Ireland (2009) - and although they were kept in Roman times when they were well known as a (somewhat revolting) delicacy called laurices, they were not mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086 and appear not to have been released into the wild in this country until some time after the Norman Conquest.

Some years ago a friend of mine - the late Jane Bradley, the original CFZ art director who was tragically killed in 1995 - showed me a book on Cornish legends that had belonged to an elderly relative. In it was a claim that the rabbit had been a sacred animal to the Cornish tin miners and that like so much else of their lore it had been directly inherited from the Phoenician tin traders who plied their trade between their homeland in the Middle East and the south-western peninsular of these islands. Jane told me that her father had made somewhat of a study of such things and believed that the Phoenicians had brought wild rabbits from their homeland and introduced them to the UK at least 1,000 years before they were introduced by the Normans. He went on to say that the rabbits in the wilds of Cornwall were smaller and darker than those elsewhere in the country.

Mr Bradley is also long dead, I cannot remember the name of the folklore book and although over the years I have thought vaguely about this conundrum, I would be lying to say that I had given it any serious thought whatsoever.

Some years ago when Corinna and I went to Jersey on a sacred pilgrimage to Les Augres Manor we found a Channel Islands guidebook that claimed that the rabbits of one of the islands (I think Alderney, but as I can't find the guidebook now it is only a supposition) tend to be smaller and darker than those on the mainland, but whether there are any significant links between the Channel Islands and the Phoenician tin traders of the first millenium I know not.

Is this all just a tissue of nonsense that I got at third-hand from a long dead alcoholic, or could there actually be some small grain of truth? I give this story to you of the bloggo readership as it stands; one of those mildly intriguing little stories that has been floating around the intersteces of my mental filing cabinet for the last 20-odd years. Make of it what you will, and if anyone out there has anything to add to this story please do not hesitate to get in touch.

GAVIN LLOYD WILSON: Black Bunnies

Black bunnies - melanistic black rabbits in the wild

Each night last week BBC1's early evening magazine programme The One Show featured a segment filmed at Tiggywinkles Wildlife Hospital near Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire. During the report on Wednesday's programme we were shown an orphaned wild baby rabbit that just happened to be jet-black in colour. The reporter, Mike Dilger, claimed that such melanistic rabbits were "one in a million".

Well, for the past 10 years or so I have been seeing wild black rabbits in and around Didcot, Oxfordshire, where I live. At first I thought it was the same individual I was seeing over and over, but then I started seeing them in other locations locally. I have on occasion seen two or three at the same time, and have sighted both adults and babies with this condition. I estimate that in total I have seen between 20 and 30 such individuals over the last 10 years.

So, if such black bunnies are really "one in a million", does that mean they are all concentrated into this one small area of Oxfordshire? Somehow I very much doubt it. I would like to throw this question open to the readers of the CFZ bloggo and ask for black rabbit sightings from around the country, just to get a more realistic idea of how widespread this phenomenon is.

Are these black rabbits becoming more commonplace? Does anyone remember seeing such rabbits in the wild 20, 30 or more years ago?

I attach two photographs I took of a black rabbit in a field in East Hagbourne, near Didcot, on 20 July 2010.

Gavin

MUIRHEAD`S MYSTERIES:WISCONSIN RIVER MONSTER AND CAT-RABBIT HYBRID

Hi folks!

Today I am looking at two cryptids: one river monster and an alleged hybrid between a cat and a rabbit. The water monster is from 1904 in Wisconsin and the Californian “rabbit-cat” example from 1907 at a show in a place called Chutes Park (in or near Los Angeles?) is the first case I have ever read about. I am not familiar with the literature on the subject of “rabbit-cats.”

New Wisconsin Fish Story

A strange creature resembling a long-haired dog with six webbed feet and fins like a fish was caught in the river near La Crosse, Wis,the other day by Millard (?) a clam fish man. The animal was equiped with the tail of a fish and had a head shaped much like a walrus. The species is unknown to local scientists. Nothing like it has ever been seen before.(1)

Note – La Crosse is an inland town by a river about 200 miles west of Lake Michigan

Freak Graces Show.

A pair of rabbit cats bred by Frank T. Cantara are another freak exhibit of the show. These strange creatures have the haunches of a rabbit and the short stubby tail of that animal, but their bodies and heads are those of a cat. At places on their bodies the cat hair gives place to rabbit fur. These strange quadrupeds hop about like a rabbit and eat grass. Mr Cantara produced them by crossing a male rabbit and a female cat. The original litter contained seven little ones, but Jack and Tootsie are the only ones left.

An accident to one of the exhibitors who was viewing the sights at the Chutes was the occasion for the creating of another class of cats yesterday. While a young man, who desires his name to be kept quiet, was leaning over the railing watching the sea lion disporting in the icy water he noticed some animals swinging around in the pool. Crawling over the rail to get a closer view he fell into the pond. He then observed that the creatures he had seen were also a variety of cats, called cat-fish. (2)

1. The Richmond Climax June 8th 1904
2. Los Angeles Herald January 18th 1907 p.9

Devo – Beautiful World

It`s a Beautiful World We Live In
A Sweet Romatic Place
Beautiful People Everywhere
The Way They Show They Care
Makes Me Want To Say

It`s A Beautiful World (x3)
For You (x3)

It`s A Wonderful Time To Be Here,
It`s Nice To Be Alive,
Wonderful People Everywhere,
The Way They Comb Their Hair
Makes Me Want To Say,

It`s A Wonderful Place (x3)
For You (x3)……

THE WANDERER RETURNS

I tried for at least ten minutes to take the iconic picture of James Dean in Giant with the rifle across his shoulders, and photoshop Graham's face onto him, but failed dismally.

Why?

Because Graham, the great white hunter of the CFZ, captured his most fearsome and difficult prey yet. Yes, Maureen the rabbit is back in her hutch after seven days out on the lam!

Graham utilised the most hi-tech modern technnology in the CFZ arsenal, and after days of R+D finally managed to fashion a trap carefully tailored to the needs of the situation.

It is the technical knowledge like this that has always put us at the forefront of the hunt for mystery animals across the world.

Carefully, he put the hi-tech `capture device` into place, and waited with baited breath for nearly half an hour before the reclusive Maureen ambled into view.

I am glad that he had the presence of mind to video the capture process, because we are only too aware of what usually happens when the CFZ announce an event of this magnitude.

The canaille of "teh internnetz" refuse to believe that we could possibly have achieved what we claim, and spend the next few months rubbishing us online. No doubt the same thing will happen this time.

They will claim that Graham doesn't really exist (that he is really Max wearing some kind of Trout Mask Replica), and that we spent the last three months faking up this footage frame by frame on Adobe Photoshop.
But no.

We not only have the photographs and the film but we have the rabbit too. Proof that the CFZ always tell the truth about their creature-hunting exploits.

Now for the next move. Graham is trying to work out how he can utilise this technology in hunting the sasquatch....

Watch this space

NB: Graham has also (we sincerely hope) done enough first aid to the hutch in order to make it escape-proof.

I would prattle on about wild animal containment facilities, and capture holding areas but I really cannot be bothered.

THE CFZ ON CHRISTMAS EVE

It is cold, it is frosty, and although the sunshine in the middle of the day has made the snow melt to a certain extent, it re-freezes at night, and the garden, the paths, and even some of the lane outside, is covered in a glassy covering that is as slippery as, ummmmm, a very slippery thing.


Two CFZ Residents - Graham (aged 52) and Biggles (aged 18 months) - are taking advantage of this and are using the garden as an ersatz skating rink. Biggles in particular is very funny to watch. Last year he was taken aback by winter, but this year he is grokking it immensely,


When he was a small puppy I made the great mistake of buying him a present which consisted of a rope, upon which was threaded a number of hard, rubber applecores. Over the last year and a bit he has become proficient with what Richard describes as his `doggy nunchucks` and he can cause enormous amounts of damage with them as he whirls them around his head. Corinna banned them from the house when doggy was under six months old, and he keeps them in the garden.

The rope became sodden in the waters of the melting snow, and then froze solid, and so when Biggles went into the garden for his morning excercise he whirled them about like Hassan I Sabbha after a particularly savage bender. I wish I had a fraction of his energy. For that matter, I wish that I had a fraction of Graham's energy, but that is another story.

Graham is still on the track of unknown animals, by the way, because Maureen the rabbit is still on the loose.

Graham put her hutch out, with a convenient ramp leading up to it, and left some food in it. Amusingly, she obviously visited the hutch during the night because the food was gone, although Graham did see a large cock blackbird helping himself to the provender that had been so thoughtfully provided by a munificent CFZ.

So the battle of wills between Graham and Maureen the rabbit continues. Who will come out top? All bets are off. Watch this space....

SEASON OF GOODWILL AT THE CFZ...the ongoing story

Well, Oll has gone home to Wales for the next ten days, although I have to say that I am very grateful to him for continuing to do Yesterday's New Today whilst on his holidays.

So it is just me, Corinna, Biggles and Graham.

Yesterday we had a trailer-load of logs delivered - not bad for £65, I thought, but I was mildly perturbed at the fact that they caused a veritable road block of the lane outside our house. Note Biggles investigating what turned out to be a dead vole at the side of the road.

Then, for reasons best known to himself, Graham put the logs into the log bin by the process of hurling them from the gate, much to the entertainment of Biggles who started to bark wildly and chase them.

This was obviously something that was not really sustainable in the long term, so after about ten minutes of this he came into the office to help me work on the CFZ 2010 Yearbook while Graham finished doing his lumberjack bit. I was waiting for him to sing the song, but he didn't.

We ended up with far more logs than we had bargained for and Graham ended up bringing four wheelbarrow loads in to stack by the fire. I am seriously looking at getting a woodburning stove for the Dining Room for next year. The price of oil is rising so high that the aga, which was once an economic way of heating the house, is becoming an expensive luxury, whereas wood is cheap and sustainable.


Cryptozoologists are often supposed to be trudging through the snow, following footprints of mysterious animals, and for once we (and by that I mean Graham) was doing exactly what the public supposes us to do.

The mystery animal is not a yeti, however, nor is it a waheela. It is Corinna's rabbit, Maureen, who has escaped and for two days now is refusing to come home, even though she is going no further than twenty feet away from her hutch, and spends considerable amounts of time nuzzling noses with Pringle (Olivia's rabbit) who is still safe at home.

LIZZY CLANCY: The Baum Rabbit

It is always nice to be able to introduce you all to a new guest blogger. Possibly the nicest thing about the CFZ bloggo is that it is a living, breathing community and new people arrive on a regular basis. I can't tell you anything about Liz apart from the fact that she bought some books from us at Uncon, briefly spoke to Richard and had a charmingly old-fashioned habit of referring to me as `Mr Downes,' when everyone else calls me `Jon` or `Hey You` (or sometimes something more scatological), until I told her not to.

She is also the unpaid bloggo sub-editor and author of a charming and very elegantly written fortean novella called The Second Level, which I strongly urge you all to buy at this link:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/offer-listing/095601156X/ref=dp_olp_new?ie=UTF8&condition=new

The Baum restaurant and wine bar rests snugly in the time warp that is Rochdale’s Toad Lane, next door to the Pioneer museum and across from St. Mary’s the Baum church. It serves glorious food and real Lancashire ale. You can’t say fairer than that. However, there’s another reason for north-western readers of the CFZ bloggo to dash out to their cars and wing their way in our general direction: the Baum rabbit.

In the first half of the fourteenth century the Earl of Oxford rushed to the little town of Rachedall (as Rochdale was then known) to warn Blanche, the woman he loved, that the Black Death was on its way. The poor fellow had to walk much of the way since his horse died from exhaustion and at Blackstone Edge, the moor land above our town, he lay down by the Monstone (a large rock with a legend all of its own) to sleep.

He was awakened much later by the sound of laughter and music. He sat up and beheld a crowd of butterfly-winged fairies dancing in a circle. The fairy queen appeared and remonstrated with her people for celebrating while the townsfolk of Rachedall suffered, for while Oxford slept, the plague had reached the vicinity. To prove to their human guest that fairies were capable of kindness, the queen granted Oxford the ability to save one Rochdalian from the Black Death by writing their name on the Monstone. Without hesitation the Earl scratched out ‘Blanche de Boulton’ with his diamond ring. Immediately, the fairy horde disappeared and there, sitting on the Monstone, was a beautiful white rabbit, which wore a golden torc about its neck.

Oxford took the rabbit to Rachedall and the house of his beloved. Blanche was already stricken with the disease but as soon as she held the little rabbit in her arms all symptoms disappeared. Blanche’s brother, Thomas de Boulton, was parish priest of the town and she and Oxford helped him tend the sick of the community. They often rode as far as Todmorden and Castleton, always taking the rabbit along; however, it was the area known as ‘the Baum’ that was the worst affected so Blanche and her rabbit would mostly be seen there. It’s said that after the death of England’s last victim of Bubonic plague, Blanche’s white rabbit disappeared, never to be seen by its former owner again; though to this day, sightings of the Baum rabbit still occur in that area of Rochdale, mainly, it has to be said, by people who have just had a skin-full in the pub of the same name.

TWO NOSED RABBIT

Only Fleur could join in the ongoing discussion of teratology and lusus naturae with something almost unbearably cute - a rabbit with two noses. She sent me a link to a story on MSN News which read:


"A pet shop worker found a bunny with two noses in a delivery of six-week-old dwarf rabbits at a store in Milford, Connecticut.

The owner of the Purr-Fect Pets shop says he has never seen anything like it in 25 years in the business.


He says the bunny eats, drinks and hops around like the rest of the litter."


What a peculiar, but very cute, looking creature...

GLEN VAUDREY: The phantom rabbit of Crank

Glen is one of the newer additions to the bloggo family. He wrote to me out of the blue last year to ask wherther we wanted a Western Isles volume in our Mystery Animals of Britain series. We argeed that we did indeed want one, and commissioned him. What we were not expecting was such a bloody good writer and all round nice guy, who - by the way - is writing several other volumes for us...

While searching around for reports for the Mystery Animals of Lancashire book I came across a tale of a most terrible apparition that is said to haunt the lanes of the delightfully named hamlet of Crank. While some areas are subject to the prowling of mystery big cats and others suffer the paw prints of phantom hounds Crank on the other hand gets a white rabbit. Not a giant talking rabbit but a vengeful doom-foretelling bunny.

Like many a phantom dog this zooform has its own legendary foundation. The story goes that way back in the 17th century there was a nameless old woman who occupied a hovel within the hamlet of Crank which she shared with her daughter Jenny and Jenny’s pet rabbit. Fitting for the time the old woman was soon branded a witch by a neighbouring farmer by the name of Pullen who was convinced that he had been bewitched by her. Local belief had it that by drawing blood from the witch the spell would be broken and it was to this end that Pullen and his accomplice Dick Piers broke into the old woman’s cottage. Rather clumsily they awoke Jenny with the racket as they attempted to cut the old woman’s arm, not wanting to hang around Jenny ran off into the night taking her rabbit with her. She was pursued by Piers and while she managed to evade capture she succumbed to exhaustion and was found dead in the chapel. Her white rabbit didn’t fare much better as it was beaten to death. Of course just because you’ve beaten the bunny to pulp it doesn’t mean that it won’t come after you.

It was only a month later when the white rabbit appeared and started to follow Piers around the hamlet eventually being held responsible for driving him to commit suicide in Billinge Hill quarry. But the vengeful bunny wasn’t finished there as it now set about hounding Pullen who was to be seen being pursued across the fields until he died frightened and exhausted by the chase.

While the white rabbit may not be a headless hell hound it is still rumoured to haunt the area foretelling doom upon its sighting, but I wonder if this particular zooform has really anything to do with the little old lady or if she was just an invention to explain the presence of the ghostly white rabbit.