It sounds like a job for Wallace and Gromit. A "monster" rabbit has
apparently been rampaging through vegetable patches in a small village in
northern England, ripping up leeks, munching turnips and infuriating local
gardeners.
German
rabbit breeder Karl Szmolinsky presents his giant male breeding rabbit
'Robert' in Eberswalde, eastern Germany, February 2006. In a tale
reminiscent of the last Wallace and Gromit movie, furious villagers in
northeast England have hired armed guards to protect their beloved
communal vegetable gardens from a suspected monster rabbit.
[AFP] |
In an uncanny resemblance to the plot of
the hit animated film "Wallace & Gromit in the Curse of the Were-Rabbit,"
angry horticulturists in Felton, near Newcastle, have now mounted an armed guard
to protect their prized cabbages and parsnips.
"They call it the monster. It's very big -- it's nearly the size of a dog,"
said Joan Smith, whose son Jeff owns one of the plots under attack.
"It's eating everything, all the vegetables," she told Reuters. "They are
trying to shoot it. They go along hoping to catch it but I think it's too
crafty."
In the "Wallace" film, which topped both the U.S. and UK box office charts
and in March won an Oscar for best animated feature film, the plasticine heroes
battle a mutant rabbit bent on destroying their home town's annual Giant
Vegetable Contest.
Those who say they have witnessed Felton's black and brown monster describe
it as a cross between a rabbit and a hare with one ear bigger than the other.
Its antics came to public attention when Jeff Smith, 63, raised it as an
issue with the local parish council.
"He came along to pay the annual fee for the allotment (vegetable patch) and
he said 'ooh we've got this big cross between a hare and a rabbit,'" the
council's clerk Lisa Hamlin told Reuters.
Smith himself has described it as a "brute" which had left huge pawprints.
"This is no ordinary rabbit. We are dealing with a monster," he was quoted by
newspapers as saying.
"It is absolutely massive. The first time I saw it I thought to myself 'What
the hell is that?'
"We have two lads here with guns who are trying to shoot it, but it is very
clever."