Sacrificial Rabbit
I’m a rabbit that glows in the dark,
A flopsy, fluorescent and green:
Not for me a good nose in the park –
It’s really not my kind of scene.
At night when the foxes and vixens debauch,
I shine like a steady and luminous torch.
They crossed me with jellyfish, yes,
So the lighting inside me’s incessant.
But it wasn’t done under duress,
And I hope, now I’m so luminescent,
That it saves a few lives, a reward on its own.
You’d do it for me, you’re not all hearts of stone.
Supposing a dose of uranium
Pushed straight down a human’s long tongue
Helped a bunny who had a sore cranium –
You’d queue up, the old and the young,
To help solve the headache, whatever your class,
Though it meant that a beacon shone out of your arse.
They say that you’re breeding like us,
And that Britain has litters of sprogs –
Volunteer them, and don’t make a fuss.
Make amends for the fruitbats and frogs
And the rats and the mice, and also the rabbit.
Animal testing’s a very bad habit.
We’ve all got to die in the end
(Was that Hamlet or Watership Down?) –
Now you’ve young’uns to spare, you can send
Them to labs. They’re all over the town.
We’ve done our bit. I shine out like a furnace.
Both of us know what taking your turn is.
Click here for a Guardian story about rabbits
Click here for a Guardian story about the baby boom
