by Cole Herrold
Rabbits are one of the most beloved pets
that people get. While children year-round want an actual bunny for Easter as
opposed to the nightmare that is the Easter Bunny for those not traumatically
scarred by watching the not-so kid-friendly Watership Down, it can be a
fun and loveable furry addition to the family. When people think of rabbits,
they, outside that Lovecraftian Easter Bunny, tend to imagine tiny, sometimes
overly fed, long-eared animals that have a hardcore urge to eat vegetables. In
this way, we often feel that because we keep them as pets and for the avid
outdoorsmen hunt them that there is nothing new regarding these animals,
especially in the world of Cryptozoology. However, in California, there was a
case of a rabbit whose proportions would have made it fit in with the other
colossal kaiju creeps in the cult film Night of the Lepus.
It was in March of 1969 when Stephen P. Alpert, a geologist working towards his Ph.D., was out in the Northern part of L.A. County near Vasquez Rocks State Park is an area known as Tick Canyon. He was deployed to this particular area as part of a UCLA Geology project which focused on mapping the various rock kinds in the surrounding area. It was during this particular day, as he scanned the horizon mapping certain points down, that he noticed something bizarre on the landscape. A large dark form that seemed to almost blend in with the rocky terrain. He got closer and got to about 7ft from the figure when it raised up, and he could see that what he had been looking at was a kind of bizarre animal. The creature stood about five and a half feet tall, had large ears and a long face, and a dark brown body with muscular forepaws. He estimated that the bulky yet slender animal was about 150-175 lbs. Stephen stared at the anomalous animal as he stared back and thought, "that looks like a kangaroo! What is a kangaroo doing out here?". As he scanned the body, however, he noticed that the creature was missing something that seemed to indicate that what he was looking at was not a marsupial, and that was the lack of a pouch. He watched as the animal proceeded to turn and bound away. As the animal turned, he got his official confirmation that this was nothing of the classical marsupial variety, for instead of the classic long tail seen in kangaroos, wallaroos, and wallabies, this animal had in its place a white cotton ball tail as seen in rabbits and hares. He watched the creature until it finally managed to hop out of sight.
