The Hurting Bunnies Ordinance (A children’s bedtime story)
By Dan Holman
Every year my wife plants a large vegetable garden in our back yard. We live near the muddy Mississippi River where the soil is fertile and rich in minerals. The tender spouting vegetables draw in lots of hungry furry critters. They often leave us with little to harvest.
I had set up some bunny traps, but the bunnies were too smart for them. I bought a pellet rifle and plunked a few, but bunny-loving neighbors complained, and I had to give it up.
I bought an electric fence which kept most of the critters out of the garden.
Some of the professors at the local college heard about this and rallied some of the students. They carried signs around our neighborhood which read: “LECTRIC FENSES HURTS BUNNIES!” Their protest drew attention to the city council which was up for re-election that year. The city council narrowly passed a “Hurting Bunnies Ordinance”, which forced us to take down the fence.
I put up an expensive cyclone fence with razor wire on top. I hoped that our return on the vegetables would eventually pay it off. It was a lot of bother working inside this fence but it kept the critters out.
The “Hurting Bunnies” ordinance inspired the Organization of Bunny Lovers to expand bunny Rights. Sympathetic professors and students helped a bunny lover get elected to the city council!
With every new Right the bunnies gained, the Rights of others are lost; And every new government program comes with administrative costs! “This is how democracy works!” said a professor in his lesson. What we considered a bunny problem is a bunny lovers blessing!
The Hurting Bunny ordinance, expanded year by year. It soon included Spotted Owls, and ducks, and fish, and deer! We finally gave up on our garden; and farmers forced out of stock, sold their lands to developers who chopped them into blocks.
Now every pound of meat we buy comes from Mexico; Where cows are cows, and pigs are pigs, and that’s how their bought and sold! If there be lesson learned from this, if there be a lesson told; don’t be making radical new laws that depart from the laws of old.