It seems to me that though we have done our due diligence in reporting o the behavior of dogs and cats (and chickens and storks and skunks) on postcards, we have been ignoring an only slightly less popular postcard mammal. We have spoken very little on the activities of rabbits, bunnies, and bunny rabbits.
Rabbits are, of course, very involved with Easter cards. Rabbits and eggs have worked together on this holiday for centuries, due to the intricate relationship of Spring, Rebirth, Fertility, and other symbols of the Sunday.
Why the Easter Egg and the Easter Bunny came to be the most famous pop-folk symbols of the celebration is a story just as intricate, but what matters to the postcard artist is how the story can be told on a card.
This is sometimes done in surprising ways. After all, where are the jelly beans?
Of course, rabbits are also a popular symbol of something else related to fertility and spring.
Not all of these postcards are quite as inventive as the Easter ones. But then, what the rabbits have been up to is not all that original either.
Bunnies are bunnies, after all.
Except when they’re not, of course. (I am also intrigued by the artist’s decision to give the lady rabbit a figure that lets you know who’s the mamma.
If we’re going to talk popular folk roles for rabbits, we also have this card, which took me, um, a little while as I tried to figure out what I was looking at. Kinda sorry I DID figure it out. Good luck my…let’s move on.
This card is unusual, for though there are plenty of good, reliable photographs which show cowboys mounted on the backs of jackalopes, this is one of the few which makes the noble steed a common jack rabbit. And whereas the average jackalope postcard includes a long paragraph on the back explaining the history of that rare breed, the back of this postcard treats it matter-of-factly, stating merely that every cowboy has a favorite bronc for the job of cattle punching, and this is a popular choice.
The folklore of the jackalope is extensive, and really a matter for a whole nother blog, but just to remind you that there IS an obvious difference between a jackalope and a jack rabbit, here is a reminder.
If you’re looking for real exploration of the history of the bunny rabbit, you need to get yourself more like this one, which shows there isn’t really all that much mystery about rabbits at all, if you just think things through.
There is THIS mystery, though. I have been unable to find out much about the farm run by THIS rabbit, but we may hear more of it some day. It may look like a perfectly genial agricultural community (in fact, some people have opined that the rabbit is explaining to the cow that it’s HER turn to drive the tractor TOMORROW.) But it is obviously a highly secret experimental community where bunnies are half as big as cattle, ducklings are three times as big as lambs, and swans are being turned into microscopic entities. (If you don’t see this paragraph whe your computer takes you inevitably to this blog, that is evidence that the Authorities have stepped in to suppress information about the whole operation. You have been warned.)
Blogsy Babbles 