Stranger Than Fiction
File this under research that didn’t make it into the next novel but is too interesting not to discuss.
…and if you LOVE bunnies, you should probably stop reading right now.
During the dustbowl in the 1930s, there were a lot of other plagues besides dust. As if clouds that blacked-out the sun weren’t bad enough, flies and locusts and a bunch of other biblically epic pests wreaked havoc on the poor people in the center of the country. But one thing I wasn’t prepared to add to my growing list of end-of-the-world-potential-dangers (thank you, TWD) was bunnies.
That’s right. Bunnies.
The bunnies were so bad that one town formed a posse to kill the pests. One day, after a community meeting, they rode out in groups, armed with shotguns and rifles, and chased rabbits.
The problem with this strategy was immediately apparent. Rabbits are fast, and dozens of men stomping after thousands of rabbits through the sights of their guns resulted in possibly the most dangerous hunt ever attempted.
Another meeting, and it was decided that the best way forward was to club the rabbits to death.
I don’t know if you’ve ever had the misfortune of hearing a bunny in the jaws of a cat, or witnessed a rabbit’s demise in some other horrific event, but if you have, you will never forget the sound. Rabbits in mortal danger scream, and the sound of their screams are distressingly close to those of a human child.
So, dozens of men, thousands of trapped bunnies, and I’ll let your imagination fill in the sound.
But mere days later, when the next dust storm loomed on the horizon, and then slammed into the rickety, dried-out town, blacking-out the sun for days, it was no wonder that a number of townsfolk thought the storm was vengeance from God for the horrors inflicted on the bunny population.
Who said research is boring?! <:o
Any writers out there with a stranger than fiction story?
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