Consideration of Works Past: The Year of the Angry Rabbit

I looked for this book forever.

 

(Picture from here.)

 

All of the past printings were way too expensive—in excess of a hundred dollars. I’m guessing for the longest time it was a collector’s item. Then, at some point, the cost of the book fell to a point where I merely screamed and I got a copy.

 

The Year of the Angry Rabbit was written by Russell Braddon in 1964. Braddon is Australian and this is a satirical novel so it comes as no surprise the armature around which the book is written is Australian politics. Braddon said he wrote it as a joke and it only took four weeks. It’s a pretty good joke both for and on the reader.

 

The premise is that a kingmaker constituent, Sir Alfred, responsible for the ascent of the Australian Prime Minister, Sir Kevin Fitzgerald brings Fitzgerald to task. Rabbits have been controlled by the introduction of myxomatosis. However, on Sir Alfred’s station, a resistant group of rabbits have taken over. Alfred demands Fitzgerald correct the situation. Fitzgerald tasks Professor Welch and his team to come up with an improved disease, “supermyx.” 

 

Welch does so with a bit of a caveat. The rabbits are immune to supermyx as well but it turns them into vicious rabid animals with an infective bite. Any animal the rabbits bite does of supermyx instantaneously—demonstrated on Sir Alfred early on.

 

This gives Fitzgerald an idea. After he nukes Sir Alfred’s station to make sure the supermyx rabbits don’t escape, he then commissions the military to secrete clandestine installations of supermyx bombs in every major city in the world with the control system in his study. Then, he blackmails the world into giving up nuclear arms and embracing peace. It doesn’t go all that smoothly. He has to wipe out a couple of countries that insist on continuing their war. But once that’s all over with, it’s smooth sailing. 

 

War is still economically necessary, however. So, Fitzgerald leases the outback in the middle of the country for scheduled wars promoted like the Olympics. Things go swimmingly. 

 

However, no good satire ends well. It turns out the rabbits have survived nuclear holocaust deep underground and have turned into dog-sized, intelligent, feral carnivores—all with a supermyx bite. They escape and start overrunning the country. Australia is abandoned and that would be all right except the keyboard used by Fitzgerald to trigger the supermyx bombs ends up in the path of the nightly running rabbits. Bombs go off all over the world and everybody dies.

 

It's a fun novel. It reminds me a lot of Paul Tabori’s The Green Rain in 1961. Both involve a technological event that changes the world and ends up ending humanity. There were other novels around the same time that felt similar: Brian Aldiss’ Earthworks (1965) and FROOMB! (1964) by John Lymington. They share a sense of inevitable doom mixed with an odd sense of humor. Tabori was Hungarian. Aldiss and Lymington were both English. Braddon was Australian. Maybe I was attracted to the unAmerican sensibility.

 

And I was attracted to this work and these other works. There’s a certain go-to-hell­ quality to them. A sense that they were saying I see what’s coming. Now you’ve got to see it, too.

 

I have read The Green Rain many times sense and it still holds up. FROOMB! has become a difficult read. I haven’t tried Earthworks again yet, though I will. 

 

I had high hopes for The Year of the Angry Rabbit. It didn’t exactly disappoint but it has aged and not in a good way. I think Braddon was initially going for the Leonard Wibberley tone such as in The Mouse That Roared. But the book got dark on him. Wibberley managed to keep that light tone throughout the book but it took effort and you can see different plot decisions he made that lightened the book at the cost of Mouse’s substance. Braddon didn’t do that and by the end, the “light” tone is forced. 

 

Tabori had the same problem in The Green Rain. When the book turned dark, he abandoned the light tone and switched to just saying what happened. There’s a short coda at the end of The Green Rain that really brings it home. I won’t mention it here in case you might read it.

 

Still, though it has not aged as well as I would have liked, it is still a fine book. It manages to go dark without going vicious—always a feat. 

 

State of the Farm, July 2024

I wasn’t able to participate much in the July garden due to health reasons. But I can report.

 

(No image. The router where I'm at can't handle the bandwidth.)

 

Everything seems late compared to yesterday. However, we had a hot June and July last year. So hot, in fact, that while the beans grew to cover the tunnel they were unable to set fruit until things cooled down in August. I’m from Missouri. The idea of cooling down in August still confuses me.

 

Anyway, not so this year. Our June was fairly cool so when the heat wave rolled around most of the garden was just getting going.

 

First, the beans.

 

We tried several varieties this year. Last year we ended up with two varieties that, for want of a better term, I will call white beans and brown beans. Both were pole beans. We planted the white and brown beans separately not expecting much of a difference—I had thought this was purely a cosmetic variation—but we did get a difference. The white beans grew up early and strongly while the brown beans only partially germinated. Go figure.

 

We also tried three “bush” beans from Baer’s Best Beans: Black Turtle, Pinto, and King of the Early. I put the bush in quotes because two of these beans, Black Turtle and Pinto, turned out to be either pole or half-pole beans. Half-pole means they climb a trellis but not that high. The Pinto turned out to be pole and the Black Turtle half-pole. KOTE didn’t do so well. It got some kind of yellow spot and seemed lethargic. We plan to save the Black Turtle and Pinto beans and plant them next year as pole beans.

 

We are still having germination problems. NONE of the Morning Glory seeds I planted came up strong. Most didn’t come up at all. The lack of germination has to be from the seeds. I’m thinking we’re still having COVID issues in the supply chain. I plan to take some left over Morning Glory seeds and try to germinate them in pots to see if that is, in fact, the answer. Because...

 

...we have a real rodent problem. Much, much worse than I thought it would be in the beginning of the season.

 

In June we had something come through and preferentially eat basil. That has never happened. We went through two cats that were indoor/outdoor but they disappeared. This could have been theft—one of the cats looked like a Russian Blue but the other, Marty, looked more like a weeping sore. So, I don’t know. Since then we’ve had no outdoor cat and each year the rodents have gotten worse.

 

We have caught chipmunks, vole, and one rat in our traps. In the section of the brown beans that didn’t germinate, I planted white beans and they came up beautifully. Then, one day, they were gone. We’re thinking of getting a barn cat.

 

In the rest of the garden, we have been trying goldenberries. They’re sort of like tomatillos. They seem to be determinate—that is, put up a number of fruit and stop. At least, that’s how they are behaving. I’ve been watching for more flowers. The problem is when they’re ripe, they drop to the ground. Remember the rodents?

 

We’re having a bit of the bug problem with the cabbage varieties such as bok choy, Brussel sprouts and the like. It’s not so unexpected with the Brussel sprouts but usually the bok choy works just fine. We have to figure out how to spray for the bugs without hurting the necessary beneficial and pollinating bugs. No success so far.

 

We lost the dill and some of the cucumber but were able to replant. Good luck with the daikons. Whole collections of squash did not germinate but we were able to recover with a different breed—more germination problems, I suspect.

 

In the raised beds we had a potato bug infestation but still got potatoes. Looks like we got peanuts and some sugar beets. We used coconut fiber pots for the beets with the idea they were cheaper than peat pots. Mistake. The coconut fiber pots seemed to inhibit root growth and only a few beets have thrived. We may try again next year.

 

In my continuing quest of sugar, we’re also trying sorghum. It’s a grass family member that has good seeds and has sugar in the stems. We think we planted in a section that didn’t get enough sun. Next year.

 

This year we had a bumper crop of blossoms and early potential fruit. We lost all of the peach family—almond, peach, apricot—to the rodents. The apples are doing well. Even the Granny Smith. I had threatened that this year I was going to cut it down and it produced. Maybe it listened. But, rodents again: many of the pears have been eaten. This time I think by squirrels or, perhaps, a wood chuck.

 

We’re also having a nitrogen issue in the main garden so we’re planning on getting a couple of tons of horse manure this fall. Horse doesn’t have the nitrogen that cow manure does but it has serious fiber in the apples. That helps the soil, too. Also, there’s a weird law in Massachusetts that makes it a crime to sell horse manure. This means the horse farms need to get rid of it. On the down note, the number of horse farms in the area has drastically reduced in recent years.

 

The grapes took well to the new arbors. We do have a fungus problem that I need to spray for but the plants are in good shape.

 

On the Great Experiment I spoke of last time, we didn’t have all that much luck protecting blue berries with protective tape. We tried it on two blueberries and the strawberry patch. It did not keep the birds away from the berries so we ended up netting one of the two blueberries. No birds could get through our netting. But, of course, that didn’t stop the rodents. No blueberries this year.

 

I won’t say this was a discouraging year but it is certainly looking like a lesser season compared to last year.

 

You have to look forward in this process.