It’s just a rabbit! (This isn’t Champis.) Photo by: Larry D. Moore (CC BY-SA 3.0)
So Long and Thanks for all the Rabbits.
Whah? What kind of a title is that?
Well, this is my final post for this blog and as I was thinking about what I wanted to write about, I read a recap of the top 2012 stories in Sweden according to The Local. One of the top stories was about a sheep herding bunny rabbit in Northern Sweden.
The Story
Champis the rabbit, owned by the Vigren family, took it upon himself to learn sheepherding from the family’s working border collies. The family didn’t teach the wee bunny his mad skills but they posted a video of him on their blog and the thing went viral. You can read the article and link to the video here.
The family thinks their sheep herding bunny is pretty cool but they are decidedly, well, Swedish, about the whole thing. They think Champis should just be free to live his life. They’re not shooting off to Hollywood or New York to do a round of the late night talkshows. No, they’re tickled that there is so much interest and that the video seems to make people happy. But the bunny could have been anybody’s bunny and he really isn’t, at the end of the day, anything special. Jantelagen. No bunny is better than any other bunny.
Ha ha. I’m joking, of course. But I just think the story is a perfect little summation of Sweden. It’s sweet, it’s funny, it’s quaint, it’s a family not taking advantage, it’s a farm life broadcast on a modern medium—the Internet.
My First Comment
What about the whole Monty Python-ness of this story? Holy Grail, anyone? “It’s just a rabbit!”
My Second Comment
There have been articles saying people are eating more and more meat in Sweden (and other countries). The additional jump in the numbers of cows and pigs is taxing the environment. It has been suggested in Sweden that we should switch to more environmentally friendly meats such as…rabbit. Is there a danger that someone might just eat that special some bunny…
My Third Comment
The fact that it’s a rabbit is so perfect. My dog, you’ll remember, is named “Rabbit.” How’s that for synchronicity?
So long. Fare well. Thanks for reading. I hope to take back up my personal blog in the future which will have further stories of my adventures in Sweden. You can read them here: http://3menandaswede.blogspot.se/
