The rabbit breading season seems to be on the up, leading to an outbreak of baby rabbits littering the lawns and bushes. Rabbits, after cats, are probably the most peaceable of creatures and the most relaxing to watch on a sunny day.
With rabbits a running, the birds a singing, hedgehogs emerging and the neighbours sheep bawling, then Sudbury is a picture of fecundity and wildlife. We even have a small aviary, breeding budgies.
Amongst all of this animal life it strikes me as being a tad odd that we are forbidden to keep caged birds.
I attend a University with an excessive number of Rabbits. As in walking home one night I counted 22 of them on a small lawn about 10m by 5m. According to fairly solidly drunken rumor, they are a breed of super rabbits escaped from the bio labs in the 90's.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately for them, the sport of rabbit catching is a regular event at 3am by drunken students. Fortunately for them, drunken students are bad at catching rabbits
Er, given you've been caged yourself for years, why on earth would you want to inflict such punishment on a bird who unlike yourself has done nothing at all to deserve it?!
ReplyDeleteIt is obvious, they don't want there to be any "Birdman of Sudbury", to gain any Public sympathy!
ReplyDeleteWhy would you want that? Keeping things in cages is cruel. You should know...
ReplyDeleteNot all ‘captive bunny’ stories have a ‘fluffy’ ending.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was in Dover borstal, I was ‘blocked and lost 2 weeks remission for refusing to go down into the dry moat that surrounded the place, and assist in a ‘mass cull’ of all the rabbits that dwelt there
The rabbits were all riddled with the horrendous disease myxomatosis. Their genitals swell, and runny eyes soon progress to a severe conjunctivitis. This causes blindness and is accompanied by lumpy swellings on the head and body. Thick pus discharges from the nose and their swollen eyes. Their eyes are often stuck shut.
I, along with others, was ordered to don a boiler-suit, arm myself with a 3ft length of hardwood timber, and told to descend into the moat to catch and kill (by battering) as many rabbits as we could manage.
My main argument (for refusal) was that Dover is surrounded by open country and as such, there should be plenty of ‘country folk’ (with the right equipment!) far better suited to dealing with the situation than us.
Whilst I agreed wholeheartedly that a remedy to the problem was needed, - I certainly didn’t agree with the method being proposed.This fell on deaf ears and they ‘stole’ two weeks of my life.
Considering Dover is in the county billed as the ‘Garden of England’. I would have thought they could have come up with a better method of dispatch for its sick furry inhabitants.
The bird within a cage within a cage, will be given more freedom, than the bird within a cage that itself is not in a cage.
ReplyDeleteI was in Dover Borstal 1967 to 1968 Rye House. I never got sent down the block during my time there but did when in Canterbury Prison, whilst waiting to be transferred to Wormwood Scrubs. I shaved my head which apparently against the rules.I have written my life story in, "Converted on LSD". http://www.convertedonLSDTrip.com
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