Animal of the Week May 15, 2006 -- Brown rabbit

Oh wow... what a weekend I had! I went to this crazy music festival on the south coast of England at a Pontin’s holiday camp. It was like Hi-Di-Hi but with Ruth Maddock, Paul Shane, Sue Pollard and the rest replaced by avant-garde folk and rock musicians... And it was wow so much fun, the music was great and the good-times rolled well into the evenings.

One evening I was sat up looking at the stars. And you know how it is when you look at the stars and you stare at the nearest and the brightest and then when you've focused on them you, like, see another layer behind them, and then you focus on those, and behind them, there are even more stars even further away and even smaller. But when you've been staring for a couple of hours it seems that the once inky-black night sky is just a carpet of white starlight travelling millions of billions of trillions of miles into your eyes. And I felt really small, like so small that I may as well not even have existed. But my hands felt so big, like they were reaching off into the universe, my interplanetary pinky poking Pluto and the thumb on the same hand shooting out through the Milky Way. With my fingertips I could feel the ripples of the big bang.

I was looking at the stars and lying on a sand dune and suddenly, I saw The Oryctolagus cuniculus (The Rabbit), staring at the stars too. I say The Oryctolagus cuniculus, because this was the first rabbit brought here by the Romans (hence the Latin name). She is about 2000 years old and the origin of all the bunnies in the UK, a rabbit god. And she turned to me and said. "Let me tell you a story", and I was like, "OK". And she said "Once, I was here sat watching one of my children eating grass minding its own business, but behind a tree there was a cat stalking the rabbit, the rabbit was oblivious to the cat's presence, and the cat was biding it's time, I could see the muscle tension in the cat's hind legs coiling in preparation for the pounce. But, unknown to the cat, behind another tree there was a badger, hungry and old, it had seen the cat and thought it might try its luck. But the badger was oblivious to the lynx, which still lived here then, behind the tree, eyeing up old brock. And the tufty ears was not conscious of the wolf, and the wolf unaware of the bear, and the bear had not noticed the angry old cow bison wanting to exact revenge for too many lost calves. Just as the kitty was about to pounce, badger dived upon the cat, the lynx leapt on the badger, the wolf jumped the lynx, the bear grabbed the wolf, and the bison trampled the bear. Ancient, and old, and finally at peace the bison lay down and died. And the only animal left was the rabbit, which grew old and had many kittens who would come and gorge themselves on the grass that grew rich where the all the bodies had decayed."

I was like, "Wow, that's an amazing story", and The Rabbit was like,"I know". And then I asked The Rabbit why she spoke with a Mexican accent. But she just formed a lagomorphic pyramid with her rabbit kin and they skipped away, The Rabbit on top juggling tiny moons.

How was your weekend?My summary: Nu-folk musicians touched=4. Favourite apple=Cox.