Ban the bunny.

You may not know that in Australia the rabbit is a declared noxious pest. For much of the last century rabbits have been in plague proportions in many country areas. Lacking a natural predator, they multiplied like, well, rabbits. During the Great Depression in the 1930's many people survived on rabbit meat which was cheap and easy to obtain. City streets reverberated to the cries of "Rabbito" and housewives ran out with their sixpences to buy. The irony here is that rabbits were introduced to give the ordinary man the opportunity to hunt them and eat the meat, a luxury enjoyed only by the landed gentry in England.  In fact many original settlers in Australia were convicts transported for the crime of poaching.
 It was only with the introduction of a disease called myxomatosis that any kind of control was possible, as rabbits became immune to this virus, another one called the Callici virus was introduced and we wait to see if this is the answer to the rabbit problem.

(photo; National Archives of Australia)

This is an image taken during the worst time, the rabbits having totally denuded the land.
It is quite odd then that bunnies feature so much in our Easter celebrations. A number of determined people would really like to use an indigenous animal in place of the rabbit and they have nominated the Bilby. The Bilby is  shy nocturnal creature  with a pouch in which it carries it's young, obviously designed for carrying Easter eggs as well! Interestingly the pouch faces backwards so that it does not fill up with dirt when the animal digs for food.
All of this information is to introduce this etegami, one of my series on Australian animals.

Don't you just love those big ears?

Raining etegami

What is it they say? 'It never rains but it pours'? Well after an etegami 'drought' I have managed three in two days.
It is the Easter break here and life has  wound down for most people. Good Friday is the one holiday that people seem to treat with some respect, almost all of the shops are closed and folk spend the time with their friends and family or doing etegami. LOL.
Traditionally it has been a time to tidy up around the house, do those little DIY jobs and paint sales go through the roof prior to the long weekend. In the spirit of home renovation we have decided to replace the silicon joints between the wall and our hand basins, riveting stuff eh?

Gardening and harvesting our chokos (enough for us and the neighbours) prompted the first etegami.

The wombat seemed to be  a good subject to follow in my series of Australian birds and animals, the only wombat I can see locally (they are nocturnal) is in a cage at the local wildlife park, a grumpy chap he really would not make a good substitute for the Easter bunny though I am sure a chocolate one would be better than the Easter Bilby, another Australian animal pushing for that role.

You have to admit they are pretty cute in a lumbering kind of way.
(For a good explanation of etegami go to DosankoDebbie's blog in my blog list.)