THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, April 15, 1995 TAG: 9504150008
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A7 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Opinion
SOURCE: George Hebert
LENGTH: Medium: 64 lines
Rabbits get occasional bursts of intense publicity - prompted, say, by a countrywide plague of them in Australia; or by a face-off between an aggressive bunny and a president, as in the anecdote involving Jimmy Carter a few years back; or by the rave reviews given the rabbit-warren adventures in ``Watership Down,'' a piece of fiction from even more years back.
And, of course, there's the gentle creature, molded of chocolate or of umpteen pastel materials, that hops into the toddlers' world at this season and can only be ignored by others if they work very hard at it.
However, there are bits of rabbit lore that don't get any such attention. And I can think of one I'd never seen in print or picture - though I could claim first-hand sightings - until I went digging for information in special animal-life publications.
I first became aware of this particular curiosity while I was still a teenager and happened to be with my father when he was out in rural areas talking to farmers and rabbit hunters.
What I learned was that not all of the wild rabbits hereabouts are cottontails. These are, technically, ``eastern cottontails,'' the kind commonly seen, early mornings or at dusk, along the edge of some tilled field or nibbling in a suburban back yard. Their habits and their large numbers give them high visibility.
But they have some rabbity company in a coastal strip reaching from here to Florida, wherever the land is low enough to hold patches of water.
The eastern cottontail is just one of a half-dozen or so distinct species of small rabbits concentrated in various regions of this continent (small, as distinguished from the big fellows known as hares in Europe and as jack rabbits on the American plains).
The cottontail kin that I'm talking about and that resides in our area is the secretive ``marsh rabbit.''
There's no dazzling flash of white from a powder-puff tail when it runs. The marsh rabbit doesn't indulge in spectacular takeoffs, and even if it did there is only a dingy little scut to raise as a flight flag. This, along with a coat of fur that is a darker brown overall than the cottontail's, makes for appropriate garb in a hidden swamp life that, even ahead of hunting dogs, amounts to little more travel than casual hops from hummock to hummock.
I've been told that this animal is a good swimmer (maybe that's what President Carter encountered while boating on that pond), and this seems logical.
Also logical, owing to their wet habitat, is the name sometimes applied to these hardy mammals by their nearby human neighbors: ``swamp rabbits.'' Or just as often, ``swampers.''
Trouble is, ``swamp rabbit'' is the name formally assigned to yet another wetlands-loving breed that resides off to the west of us in a stretch of territory centered on the lower Mississippi.
This is a somewhat heavier species than the marsh rabbit and it differs from the eastern cottontail, with which it shares territory, in various ways. It has darker fur and enjoys hummock-hopping and. . . .
But I guess we don't really need to go into all that in our neck of the woods (or marsh or swamp). MEMO: Mr. Hebert is a former editor of The Ledger-Star. by CNB