Right, let's talk about rabbits. You know those soft little nibblers you see running through the fields? Yeah, they weren’t always here. Rabbits are imports, my friend!
Back in the day, only the richest of the rich had them. Picture it—Norman lords lounging in their castles, petting their luxury furballs, carefully bred and housed in special warrens with a dedicated warren keeper to keep the bunnies on their best behaviour. They weren't even great at digging burrows back then; they weren't used to the soggy English mud, so warrens were built for them!
But like any good story of rebellion, these bunnies broke free from their fancy digs and, well, did what rabbits do best—they bred like mad. Pretty soon, they were everywhere. A luxury for the wealthy morphed into dinner for the masses. And before you know it, the rabbits were running the joint, shaping both our dinner plates and the landscape.
But it doesn’t stop at food. In East Anglia and beyond, rabbits are entangled in the weird, spooky side of folklore. It wasn’t just “aww look at that cute bunny,” oh no. You’ve got witches shapeshifting into hares to dodge trouble, ghostly white rabbits hopping around as omens of death, and sailors so terrified of the word "rabbit" that they wouldn’t even whisper it at sea.
Now, let's talk about how these little fluffballs did more than haunt your nightmares. Rabbits physically reshaped the land. In the Norfolk Brecklands rabbits created some of the rarest habitats, home to plants like the prostrate perennial knawel—a quirky little plant that doesn't exist anywhere else on Earth.
No rabbits? No knawel.
When myxomatosis hit the rabbit population, it wasn’t just the bunnies that suffered. The large blue butterfly went extinct in 1979 because of the sudden drop in rabbit numbers. Butterfly enthusiasts were devastated.
So next time you spot a rabbit hopping about, take a minute. That fluffy fella isn't just nibbling away at your garden—it’s carrying a rebellious history, a touch of witchy folklore, and a bit of ecological magic.
Pretty wild how much the little guys effect the landscape, right?
Fen Folk
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