The Monstrefact: The Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog

are told death awaits us, all with nasty, big pointed teeth. Yes, this is the famous killer rabbit from the film Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and the audience indeed gets to watch on as the otherwise normal looking white rabbit commences to slaughter medieval nights right and left, until the Nights of the Round Table do finally defeat the creature with the aid of the legendary holly hand grenade of Antigoch.

It's a wonderfully absurd scene, and of course, the obvious reason for the absurdity is that rabbits of the natural world are generally noted for their bashfulness in the wild and their docile nature in domesticated settings. This seems to be true of all extant rabbits and hairs of the family Leopori day and even such prehistoric examples as neurologist Rex, which would have been about six times the size of

a living rabbit, were largely herbivores. Though to be sure, rabbits are capable of eating their own young, and there are also anecdotal reports of rabbits scavenging meat in the wild. So the mere idea of a killer rabbit is of course again inherently absurd, whether we're talking about the killer rabbit of Carbana or the giant rampaging rabbits of VY two's Night of the Lepis. Though I suppose I'm willing to give giant rabbits in a largely barren environment the

benefit of the doubt. Still, the idea is inherently silly, so silly that the notion of a killer rabbit continues to resonate in varying areas of discourse. Just as one quick example, and again this one is from the nineteen seventies,

in which there is a fair amount of killer rabbit excitement. Obviously, uh as Gary Bettel wrote in a nine paper in the New Scholasticism, quote to find a carnivorous rabbit would indeed so upset our system of knowledge that we might have, that we might hesitate to classify the newfound entity as a rabbit. But the idea of a killer rabbit is not just a comedic obsession of the seventies. No, the

idea actually goes back hundreds of years. At least. The facade of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, France features an image of a night fleeing from a rabbit, an image that reportedly inspired the Python filmmakers. Such a fearsome rabbit also pops up in the medieval literary cycle of Reynard the Fox, again as an absurdity, an example of extreme cowardens, and as pointed out on the British Libraries Excellent Medieval Manuscripts blog, the motif of illustrated fearsome rabbits in medieval

manuscripts dates back to at least the eleven seventies. When we see a rabbit threatening a night in the Arnstein Passional, such rabbits typically pop up and decorated initials and marginalia, so not central illustrations, but illustrated flourishes that often celebrated absurd notions of the world turned on its head later centuries also gave us more manuscript illustrations of rabbit mischief.

The smith Field Decreetles of the thirteen forties includes images of man size rabbits shooting a hunter with a bow and arrow, and then later we see another man sized rabbit assisting in the judgment and summary execution of the hunter. The final image shows one of the rabbits beheading the hunter with a great sword. So clearly this is all in good fun and this is just one example, but I high recommend you check out that blog post Medieval

killer Rabbits when Bunnies Strike Back for more examples. Clearly, the oxymoronic power of the killer rabbit has stood out to us for some time and it will continue to resonate with us as the cute threat, the thing that couldn't possibly rise up and eat us, bite our head off, or sentenced us to death by beheading. Tune in for additional episodes of the Monster Fact each week. As always, you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is

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