The Elmer Fudd Fantasy Playbook

I'm beginning to understand Elmer Fudd. Yes, I get that he was comic relief, no redeeming social values, fat and funny-sounding, incompetent.. in fact, so bad we all cheered his failures. But I get his side of the story. Even if Bugs Bunny only stole carrots and played silly pranks. I get him.

Those wascally wabbits have invaded my front yard. The one in Sun city, of course, where we just finished planting a whole bunch of things, and thought they might be safe because other people had those plants too without the rabbits coming by uninvited for nightly smorgasborg.

I get Elmer Fudd. I too want to destroy them all. Dead dead dead!

I plot revenge. Shooting them all, setting up various trip wires to pull triggers as they approach. Setting leghold traps. Live traps, where enclosed they can be drowned in a garbage can of water without mess and fuss. Inviting in the local coyote population to chase down, snack on, remove bodies to their dens. Setting out poisons attractive only to rabbits, ranging from lesson-giving nasties to deadlies, various levels of suffering, and of course, universally perfectly effective and perfectly targeted.

Of course all the evidence would be cleared away before daylight, before nosy neighbors and legal authorities would garner any interest whatsoever in the goings-on in the front yard. If they knew how the rabbit population was declining, we'd be thanked, of course, likely silently.. If they didn't, nobody would feel the need to express their opinion on whatever methods were used or how cute baby bunnies look. Garbagemen would haul away anonymous bags of bunny bodies all unaware of contents beyond the label of garbage. Coyotes that everybody pretends to hate would be rewarded for their activities in reducing the scourge by feeding their families.

Of course, the ugly truth is that one can indulge in fantasies all day and night long, and plants still fall victim to predation. Elmer Fudd always fails because nobody wants to see a cartoon where the wrong critter gets hurt or dies, or Elmer gets hauled off to jail. So my front yard is going to be turned into a prison camp, where each plant grows inside its own cage of chicken wire, and the bunnies, if we're really lucky, wander off to the golf course to munch grass. If we're really really really lucky, folks would stop planting and watering acres of green bunny food to walk on and hits balls on, and they'd all starve.