Myxie

[Rhyd6]

Which ever mad scientist thought up the idea of infecting the rabbit population with myxie should have been locked in a padded cell. Don't get me wrong I've shot many a bunny in my time but myxie really is the pits. We seem to have it on our land once again and I've spent the last couple of days putting wrecks of rabbits out of their misery. I hate it with a passion.

R6

[Breelander]

Apparently it arrived in the UK of its own accord in 1953. At first deliberately spreading it was encouraged...

...though this is now illegal in the UK under a 1954 law.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myxomatos ... ed_Kingdom

The UK is actually one of the few countries NOT to deliberately introduce it. Australia was the first, Ireland, France and New Zealand are others that did so.

[bungeejumper]

Horrible, isn't it? You come round a corner in the road and there they are, on the grass verge and just staring at the road with their big watery eyes, waiting for death. We always worried that our cats would cop something nasty when they were out rabbiting in the fields (which was frequently). I mean, they were always going to catch and eat the weak little bunnies that couldn't run away, weren't they?

OTOH, I suppose the moggies were doing everybody a service by despatching them. Fortunately, eating the mixy rabbits never did seem to harm the cats.

Who invented mixy? We usually blame a Frenchman, who found it in Uruguayan rabbits and thought it would be a good idea to let it loose in France in 1950. But actually the Australians had been toying with the idea since the 1920s. They had a bigger rabbit problem than us, of course - but then, they could always blame an Englishman for having given them the little pests in the first place. Passing the buck, I suppose you could call it.

BJ

[Itsallaguess]

Who invented mixy? We usually blame a Frenchman, who found it in Uruguayan rabbits and thought it would be a good idea to let it loose in France in 1950.

But actually the Australians had been toying with the idea since the 1920s.

They had a bigger rabbit problem than us, of course...

Just to be clear, did Australia have a problem with bigger rabbits, or did they simply have a problem with normal-size rabbits that was bigger than our problem?



Cheers,

Itsallaguess

[bungeejumper]

Just to be clear, did Australia have a problem with bigger rabbits, or did they simply have a problem with normal-size rabbits that was bigger than our problem?

To begin with, Australia's rabbits were just randier than anybody else's. They bred faster, which wasn't that difficult considering that they had no natural predators. The problems really started when super-large rabbits were occasionally spotted in the outback, boxing with kangaroos, and by the 1950s they were openly swilling Fosters and attacking crocodiles. It was a step too far. Something had to give.

BJ