The world awoke this morning to the Year of the Rabbit.  Happy Chinese New Year’s!

As a gardener, however, I am loathe to dedicate a whole year to these creatures.  They eat half my flowers and a third of my vegetables every summer. I’ve spent a fortune on coyote urine and garden fencing to defend myself.  

As a kid, I’d root for Bugs Bunny whenever Elmer Fudd tried to catch him.  Now I refuse to watch any cartoon that lets the rabbit keep winning.  

A report on the internet claimed that half of the world’s rabbit population lives in North America. And I reckon about half of them have dropped by my yard for a snack. Last year they got the lilies, tulips, allium, hollyhocks, beans, squash, and eggplant.

An old adage advises us to know our enemies.  And so I’ve been studying up on rabbits.  I checked the internet to find out just how many of them there are.  The first website approximated the world rabbit population at 305 million. But when I tried another site, five minutes later, the count was up to 706 million. And while about half of the world’s 29 rabbit species are endangered, this does not include the cottontail, which is flourishing.  

Rabbits apparently enter parenthood when they are about four months old—which seems much too young to make for a responsible mother or father.  And sure enough, it turns out that they only care for their young for three or four weeks before letting them wander off on their own.  That’s when the abandoned youngsters first wander into my garden to forage for themselves.  

I always thought that a rabbit and a hare were identical.  But hares belong to different genus, and are born eyes wide open and ready to romp.  Rabbits, on the other hand, are born hairless, helpless, and with eyes shut tight.  Hares and jackrabbits are bigger and resist domestication.  But rabbits have been bred into dozens of types in order to provide people with pets and hats and stews.  

I’m not interested in rabbit breeding, for I care nothing for wearing, petting, or eating one.  But I would make them a big salad every morning, if they would just leave my garden alone.  But who can trust a rabbit? 

I don’t want my crabbing to take all the fun out of the Chinese celebration, however.  It’s the Year of the Rabbit.  The Year of the Tger was hard on my Chinese friends and family, as was the Year of the Ox and the Year of the Rat.  It’s high time for a GOOD year, which means we’ll have to do it with rabbits.  With Covid lockdowns, spats between Beijing and Washington, and 3-year travel bottlenecks, I’m hoping that the Year of the Rabbit turns the tide.  

For three years now, millions of Chinese have been separated from their loved ones.  Jie hasn’t been able to see her parents since 2019.  Her friends in this country have been cut off from their families, including those who have been critically ill and even died.

Furthermore, he Economist magazine reports that almost 200 million Chinese (in China) are migrant workers:  they live apart from their families in order to find jobs in other parts of the country.  The one time of year that most of them can rejoin their family is during the Chinese New Year.  The article notes: “Many millions of them have not seen home towns or villages—and in many cases their own children and the ageing parents who care for them—for two years, because of pandemic travel curbs.” (Economist, January 21, 2023.)  Officials estimate that there will be over 2 billion homecoming trips made over the holiday by bus, train, plane, and car—now that restrictions are finally relaxed.  

In our own country, the Chinese Association of Champaign/Urbana had a banquet last night to usher in the Year of the Rabbit.  Over 150 Chinese expats spent the lunar New Year’s Eve eating Chinese food, visiting with friends, dancing, singing, sharing gifts, and showing off native costumes.  Many of them have lived in this community for several decades, but their hearts tilt to their homeland this time of year.  Many cannot be with family, and so their Chinese neighbors become family for such a time as this.  The Chinese New Year, sometimes called the Spring Festival, is akin to Christmas for Americans and Europeans.  It is the most sentimental occasion in the year, the time you want to cocoon with family. 

The Chinese New Year is celebrated throughout many parts of Asia:  Korea, Japan, Singapore, Malaysia, Viet Nam, Indonesia…  Our celebration last night did not, however, include Vietnamese, as folks there consider this the year of the cat.  And we all know what cats think of rabbits.  Next year the Vietnamese will fall back in line, however, when all Asians reunify in the Year of the Dragon. 

Since I still have two months before my first flowers start peeking out of the dirt, I can enter a truce with all the nice bunnies in the world and say something pleasant in this post.  (No way, however, I could I bring myself to write anything positive about the beasts come May.) 

In Chinese folklore, there are rabbits on the moon.  Obviously they didn’t go there for the flowers and gardens.  They were transported there by Chang’e.  Chang’e was once married to Houyi, a hero with the bow and arrow.  After rescuing the earth, Houyi was given an elixir that guaranteed him immortality.  He left it with Chang’e one day while he went out on another hero job.  While he was gone, the villain Fengmeng broke into the house and tried to steal the elixir for himself.  Chang’e decided to drink it all and escape to the moon.  (The current Chinese Lunar space program is named after her.)  The story claims that she took some rabbits with her.  In any case, when Chinese poets look at the moon, some of them supposedly see rabbits. 

Likewise, when children (and other non-gardeners) see rabbits, they see sweetness, innocence, and vulnerability.  The rabbit makes people think of softness and purity. If you carry a rabbit’s foot around with you, it will allegedly bring you good luck, although the rabbit running around with only three feet probably doesn’t go along with that superstition.

The fertility of the rabbit population has influenced both Christianity and Playboy.  Christians celebrate resurrection’s indefatigability with Easter bunnies.  Meanwhile, the folks at Playboy somehow became so infatuated with the sex lives of rabbits that they conjured up their own kind of bunny.  In the case of Playboy, however, it’s not the bunnies who are the pests, but rather the exploiters.  In their case, Elmer Fudd should ignore the bunnies and follow the money.  

And then there is the phrase from the 1930s, “The rabbit has died.”  Back in 1931, a team at the University of Pennsylvania developed a test, using rabbits, to determine whether a woman was pregnant.  Urine from a pregnant woman was injected into a female rabbit.  The rabbit was killed a few days later, and if the rabbit’s ovaries were affected, it meant the woman was pregnant.  Fortunately for rabbits, this test was no longer performed by the mid-40s.  Unfortunately for frogs, the test was performed on them, until the 1960s.  Since I was born during the “frog era” (1950s) it upsets me to know that my mother first learned about my existence from a frog.  But at least no sweet bunnies were sacrificed. 

And so now we begin the Year of the Rabbit.  Greetings to all my Chinese friends and family!  May this year be, for us all, a time of surprising graces and blessings.  And since I’ve just said some nice things about rabbits, may they give me a break in my gardens and flower beds.  Otherwise, I’ll turn into a dragon (next year’s animal) before the year is out and chase you away!