Perry, Iowa, population 7,836, is a nice quiet little town northwest of Des Moines. Perry has produced celebrity tuba player, William Bell (1902-1971), Dan Grimm (1941-2018) NFL player for the Green Bay Packers and V.T. Hamlin (1900-1993), creator of the widely syndicated comic strip Alley Oop, about an amiable caveman and his pet dinosaur, Dinny. But last week, terror struck at the heart of Perry when a small but blood-thirsty bunny began biting residents without warning.
“I am like, ‘Oh, my gosh!’” victim Ramona Rustan told KCCI, ‘I just got bit by a bunny!’”
Rustan was taken completely off guard when the young, pure black rabbit jumped up and took a bite out of her. If you’ve ever noticed a rabbit’s long front teeth, it looks like a small saber-toothed tiger. Those teeth can zip through a head of cabbage like butter. An angry rabbit is not to be taken lightly.
Rustan reported that after chomping her, the rampaging rodent hopped next door and menaced her neighbor, not letting her get out of her car. And when she did make a run for it, the rabbit chased her up to her front door, where she narrowly escaped the same fate as Rustan. Not finished with its reign of terror, the rabbit cornered and attacked a 13-year-old girl who was subsequently obliged to undergo rabies shots.
Ms. Rustan, a nurse, shrugged off her own attack. “No, I’m not worried about rabies because, when it bit me, you know, I didn’t see it frothing at the mouth or anything like that.”
Spontaneous biting is more typical of, say bit bulls than bunnies. Rabbits are famously gentle, even sweet by nature. They make tidy and affectionate pets… as long as they get their way. We had a pet rabbit when I was little. Adelle, named after the nutritionist, Adelle Davis, was a picky eater and refused to touch any produce that was not absolutely fresh. We tried to play with her but Adelle only liked my mom and when we picked her up, she would scratch us violently with the toenails of her hind feet (the rabbit, I mean—not my mom). One reason Adelle was friends with my mother is that Mom fed her malted milk balls as a special treat. The rabbit was a malt ball junkie and would aggressively rummage through her pockets to get at them.
For this reason, I suspect the Perry rabbit doesn’t have rabies. First of all, you don’t see pure black rabbits in the wild. This is somebody’s pet that escaped from its cage and now it’s mad that nobody is feeding it.
When the Perry police finally apprehended the buck-toothed biter, they took it inexplicably to the city’s wastewater treatment plant and let it go. I suppose you can’t blame them. There are probably no official procedures for the control and maintenance of marauding cottontails. But, for heaven’s sake, somebody feed that ravenous rabbit before it strikes again!