It takes a lot of effort, if you’re a very small rabbit on a wide(ish) and open road, to get run over by a bicycle, but the one I met the other day almost succeeded. Only my managing to second-guess its wild jinking straight into my path meant it didn’t end up squashed alongside its three or four more determined friends on the road.
You’d think that a century of carnage on our roads, combined with the legendary breeding turnover of a pair of rabbits, would have led to the evolution of a brighter bunny. You would be wrong. Explain that one, Mr. Darwin…
July 21, 2009 at 3:16 pm |
If bunnies keep crossing roads for another 100,000 years or so, then it probably will be road-avoiding rabbits that come to dominate – but 100 years of serious road use isn’t an evolutionary timescale.
July 21, 2009 at 4:17 pm |
I suppose it depends on the percentage rabbits killed as well. Although, by the look of the roads around here it would seem to be most of them
(the last line of the blog entry was supposed to be a joke BTW, I point out hastily before I get in too much trouble)
July 21, 2009 at 9:51 pm |
I have lived in the same place for 25 years, and there are lots of bunnys around here. over the years I am convinced that some of them have learned that cars are to be avoided.
July 21, 2009 at 9:52 pm |
They’re keeping it a closely guarded secret from their colleagues up here then…
July 22, 2009 at 9:11 am |
Perhaps the smart ones were in the hedge waiting until you went by…
July 22, 2009 at 9:18 am |
… plotting a dreadful revenge
July 22, 2009 at 10:59 am |
Don’t blame the bunnies! The wheel was invented hundreds of generations ago in human terms but some of us have not yet learnt to stay out of its way.
July 22, 2009 at 4:56 pm |
Too true. Not too many people seem to actively throw themselves under them, though, as this bunny seemed intent on doing…
July 26, 2009 at 9:48 am |
A couple of incidents this week make me wonder – surely you met this problem with London pigeons? Pigeon + (breadcrust or approaching cycle wheel) = modern variation on Buridan’s Ass.
July 26, 2009 at 9:56 am |
Yes, the pigeons in London were a bit of a nightmare, although I never saw them eat anything so wholesome as a breadcrust. But if they were on a tasty patch of vomit, or better yet, one of their own colleagues, it was always safer to cycle round them.