Talk:204: America
I must admit, as a "younger" reader I thought that this was a joke. 108.162.238.221 18:33, 22 May 2014 (UTC)
To add some further "nuance" to this story:
As noted above, at the time the "newspapers ate [the story] up". But to give another perspective...
That is, when the story broke, it was greeted with a shrug by virtually everyone I knew in the rural area where I was living at the time. In short, anyone used to being in the woods understands that they should constantly be on the alert for any unusual behavior in a wild animal as this can be a pretty clear indication of rabies. This is particularly true of any behavior that can interpreted in any way as aggressive --especially such unexpected behavior as moving *towards* a human being.
Needless to say, the described behavior --both swimming and moving towards a human-- is clearly bizarre behavior for a rabbit. Among my neighbors at the time the fact Carter attempted to distance himself from the rabbit (or indeed any wild animal behaving in a similar manner) was seen simply as common sense practiced by an experienced woodsman.
In short the "Killer Rabbit Attack" headlines were seen as evidence those who wrote these stories had never been near the woods in their life. Arcanechili (talk) 13:25, 15 October 2014 (UTC)
