Self-Scatting Breeding Machines

I'd like to talk to you about scat and the roll it plays in my life. Now I'm not talking about the likes of Mel Torme, or my penchant for leaving gatherings quickly. I'm not even talking about the fine folks of Oxnard California and the South Coast Area Transit. No I'm talking about coprophagous, eating excrement, devouring dung, feasting on feces, rectal rumination, wolfing water logs, basically... eating shit and in this case, your own. Now as odd as I am this isn't a practice I participate in personally but in a way by proxy. You see, I raise these....


The cute and cuddly (and self-scatting) rabbit.

Rabbits are one of those creatures that in the modern American eye gets the reprieve from the dinner table due entirely to the fact that it's "too cute to eat". This beauty contest to determine animal value happens all the time. Just how far would the WWF get in it's fund raising if it's logo was an angler fish, or perhaps a proboscis monkey? I've seen the same girl that would shriek over a spider or june bug look adoringly at a lady bug thats crawling slowly over her fingers. SAVE THE WHALES!, fuck the sea cucumbers. It's all such a bizarre bigotry of beauty that we have.

I've often got the comment from folks that know I raise rabbits for reasons other than cuddling, "How can you eat a cute little bunny?" or the "I could never kill a bunny". Interestingly there is also an almost unanimous agreement from those that have ever eaten it to state "Oh yeah, rabbit is great!" and yet they still can't get past the cute.

Strangely if a thing is 'too' ugly it is off the dinner table as well. Can't eat a opossum it's too ugly. Can't eat snails, too ugly. Can't eat a snake it's too ugly and scary. Can't eat frogs their too ugly. It seems you have to be juuuuuust right to be a meal for the modern American, not too ugly, not too cute and of course you must be processed to the point that I can't tell you were ever even alive (but that's another post). Well today I'm here to tell you, rabbits just aren't that cute. Which brings us back to scat.

You see if you're not familiar with rabbits you might not realize their rather odd (to us) eating habits. You see, like most ruminants they have to work hard to extract the nutrients from their food source. Grass is junk food, there isn't much nutrients in it and what are, are hard to get at. Cows have multiple stomaches and chew their cud to deal with it. Goats and sheep have a similar system. Rabbits however are "fringe" ruminants, not fully so but not fully monogastric. To deal with this difficult food source and with the inability to actually churn food through a cud chewing/multi stomach process they have a cecum. The cecum is a sort of (to borrow the analogy of beer making from a former post) a wort tank of semi digested cellulous foods. From the cecum a black viscous paste is produces that the rabbit then consumes again directly from the anus and reingests to facilitate a double digestion process. I'd liken the taking in of the cecum syrup as putting your head under the soft serve ice cream dispenser at Dairy Queen and filling up, but this stuff comes in only one flavor. Once the foods have made a second lap around the lagomorph's digestive track it's time for evacuation in earnest. The semi dry pellets spill out the back side of the rabbit like a broken Pez dispenser as he hopes off to find new food to eat... twice.

Now if this weren't enough (and lord help you if you still think they are too cute to eat .. perhaps too nasty, but never too cute) We deal with the breeding realities of the rabbit. Everyone is well aware of the old saw "breeding like rabbits" and it's quite true, but to what extent? The fact is that rabbits have coitus induced ovulation. That's right guys, imagine your wife, significant other or friend with benefits, ovulating the moment you gave the one gun salute. There aren't enough condoms nor doctors hands to catch the number of babies that would come spilling out of those unions. But with rabbits the problem is multiplied. Rabbits have a dual uterus so, not only can they get pregnant at the drop of a hat (and if you've seen the time it takes a rabbit to have sex, that hat better not have far to fall) they can turn right around and do it again with the other side of the uterus. So, you've got fecal munchin rabbit all knocked up that delivers kits in about 1 month from the moment of carnal knowledge. Normally you'll get a litter of 5-9 kits (7 being about normal) but a double pregnancy can take that much higher, but for discussion we'll stick with 7. The mother can then get pregnant moments after birth and the young can breed at 4 months. So in a 12 month period 2 rabbits could easily multiply to over 300 rabbits, a welfare mom's dream level of production. Of course this is the rabbits strategy for survival, a sort of Normandy beach sort of way of dealing with the dangerous of life for the rabbit. Storm the beaches with enough bunnies and one or two will get through... and we all know what 2 rabbits can do. This sort of breeding would never be thought of as "cute" if our dogs did that, or heaven forbid our cats... or worse, our neighbors, but again it gets washed under the bridge by big doe-y eyes and little wiggly noses. Their very behavior crys out "eat me or I'll fuck you to extinction" and still we think them as only cute.

Well, I've seen through their ruse and I know them for what they are. The pens are full with little shit-eaters and pregnant does doing their part for the welfare state that is my backyard colony. They grow fat on uncle sugar's handouts and bide their time lounging in the sun, eating and screwing, doing their best to bury me under mountains of bunny as I sit transfixed by their cute lil wiggly noses. I however have different plans.