Tuesday, July 10, 2007

On Rabbits

My daughter is a very bright little girl, who is also very funny sometimes without meaning to be. For example, as a kindergartener, her teachers would often have her draw a picture of something and compose a sentence or two about her picture. One particular day a few months back, her class was working on identifying various animals, and she composed a sentence to describe the species of her choice, which turned out to be quite insightful:

"Rabbits are veree gud lubrz."


Now, knowing my cute little nearly-six-year-old, I was instantly able to interpret this to be:

"Rabbits are very good jumpers."


But honestly, is that what you interpreted her sentence to be? Or did you read more into this than the innocent message my daughter intended, and gathered insight into the reproductive behavior of the famously promiscuous rodent? As one encyclopedia puts it: "The reproductive rate of rabbits is notorious. The common rabbit breeds from February to October; its gestation period is 30 days and there are five to eight young in a litter."

It seems my daughter unintentionally identified why it is that rabbits breed so successfully. Simply put:

"Rabbits are very good lovers."


Her teachers, at this stage in her education, aren't too concerned about spelling; only that she tries her best. For this particular assignment she got a big red star scrawled on her page for her wonderful picture of a floppy-eared rabbit sitting amongst green grass with a blue sky overhead and the sun shining down. Based on her sentence and its alternate reading, the silly grin that she drew on its face can take on a whole new meaning.

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