I was given a little gray baby bunny one Easter when I was a child. I named him Harvey after the Pulitzer-prize winning play, “Harvey” by Mary Chase, about Elwood P. Dowd, whose best friend is a giant rabbit named Harvey that is 6 foot 3 inches tall and invisible to most people.

My Harvey grew so fast it looked like he was well on his way to becoming 6 feet tall himself. My Mom took him to a veterinarian, fearful he might have a pituitary gland problem. It turned out Harvey was fine. He was just becoming so huge because he was a Belgian hare — which is actually a large breed of rabbit to make things even more confusing — just as a Jackrabbit isn’t really a rabbit at all, but a hare.

Hares and rabbits really are different animals. They are not interchangeable. They cannot be bred together. Hares are generally larger, stronger and more energetic than rabbits. They have bigger ears and bigger feet. Their young are born with hair, eyes open to the world and pretty much ready to take care of themselves. Baby rabbits are born blind, without fur and helpless. Rabbits live underground in warrens, hares are more independent and they nest above ground.

In some cultures it’s believed if a hare crosses your path you’ll have bad luck. There are legends of witches turning into hares and long ago Eastern European people believed hares inhabited the moon.

The story of the Easter Bunny, which is based in part on West European folklore, is actually a hare, not a rabbit. Brer Rabbit is really a hare because the origins of the stories about him come from old African folklore about the slyness and trickery of the hare.

Bugs Bunny, probably the most famous animated bunny of all time, and an Academy-Award-winning bunny at that, is really a hare, not a “wascally wabbit” as Elmer Fudd would have you believe. Bugs’ first cartoon was “Porky’s Hare Hunt” in 1938 and “A Wild Hare” in 1940 is credited with catapulting him to real stardom. Many other “hare” titles followed throughout his career.

We all learned to take things slow and steady from the fable of “The Tortoise and the Hare,” or at least that’s what we were suppose to learn from it.

We’ve acquired a lot of useful terms from hares: “Mad as a March hare” (March is when male hares act all crazy because they’re chasing after female hares — they’re a lot like male humans that way); “Hare-brained idea” refers to a silly notion, also based on the manic behavior hares display in the spring; and “hare-lipped” is another expression referring to hares because they have a very pronounced split along their upper lip.

Rabbits are important, too.

Beatrix Potter’s “Peter Rabbit” has taught many young ones to listen to their mothers and stay out of potential danger (Mr. McGregor’s garden).

Uncle Wiggly Longears, created by Howard Roger Garis, was always a good role model for little gentlemen.

The white rabbit in “Alice in Wonderland” stressed the importance of time and Little Bunny Foo Foo illustrates how important it is not to be cruel to those who are smaller and more vulnerable.

“Watership Down” by Richard Adams is a wonderful book about rabbits — great for kids and adults — that reminds us of the delicate balance required when juggling spirituality, politics and culture in a society.

I think the greatest rabbit story ever told, though, is “Harvey.” And even though it’s not about Easter, it is about faith. It’s about having faith, not only in the seen and unseen, but in each other. Sometimes that’s the most important faith of all.

Elwood P. Dowd is about the happiest person you’d ever want to meet. He has faith in everything. He and Harvey have good times, but it embarrasses Elwood’s sister. She doesn’t have faith in him or anything else apparently. She’s just self-absorbed and sets out to have him committed.

Just as Elwood is about to be given a shot at the mental hospital (that is suppose to make Harvey go away), the taxi driver who has taken many people there and has seen them come back out again after their injection, says it will turn him into a “perfectly normal human being; and you know what stinkers they are!”

Having faith in something or someone doesn’t mean you’ll never be disappointed, but you sure can’t be happy if you don’t have faith in anything.



Steve Gillespie is managing editor of The Meridian Star. E-mail him at sgillespie@themeridianstar.com