You look out the window of this house in County Meath, he said, and there are three or more rabbits on the lawn. But they are so small. Is this a result of that awful myxomatosis plague of some years ago? Haven't seen a normal-sized rabbit for years. Are they all small now? Diminished by that disease. Not at all, says Rory Harrington, scientist with the Wildlife and Parks Service in Waterford. You are looking, he says, at young ones; the wise parents are certainly out of your sight, behind the whins or whatever, having learned early to be cautious; but they are not fewer than they were a couple of decades ago, and he doesn't find them smaller. Look, he says, all creatures have three basic needs: a roof over the head, so to speak; enough to fill the belly, and a certain amount of R & R i.e. rest and recreation and there is enough to feed rabbits where the grass is short, as in sheep pasture, or on sandy soil or on well-kept lawns. No, rabbits are here to stay. Modern agriculture restricts the way of life of many creatures, but if you reckon that a female can produce about 27 young in a year, you needn't worry about the rabbit future; in other words, she's not going to produce young if food is short.
There was another pest, viral haemorrhagic disease (VHD) which wiped out most of the rabbits in Spain, according to an article in Country Life, but it wasn't bad here. (Myxo, by the way comes back, lightly, from time to time.) Myxo was born in a laboratory after the ruinous plague of rabbits in Australia and New Zealand had failed to give way to gassing, shooting, snaring, ferreting and poisoning. And it spread throughout Northern Europe. No one who saw the horrible, messy results will ever forget. Anyway, rabbits are still around us. While they may eat mostly grass, the small Meath versions mentioned at the beginning, devastated an azalea bed, until it was wired in. Then one little creature was seen tucking into a huge growth of lemon balm, and would no doubt have done away with the chervil, the winter savory and the whole herb garden if precautions had not been taken in the form of a garden frame. By the way, do you still eat rabbit?
And, once again, is this idea that the adults are smaller now than in the past, an illusion, like that of the elderly remarking on the increasing youthfulness of the gardai or policemen?