Really. It has been there in Taichung, Taiwan since the Chinese New Year celebrations, and now, as I finally have a working camera again, I have the evidence. Just in time too, as the rabbit was gone a couple of days later, presumably dragged off prematurely (the Year of the Rabbit is not even half over yet) to join the giant stick and cloth tiger from last year.
There is plenty of interest in all things rabbit this year, especially in buying cute little baby bunnies. The Taiwan Government is getting in on the act too. With one of the lowest birthrates in the world, Taiwan has been in a baby slump for years. This year the Government is using the symbol of the rabbit to encourage baby making. Couples, it says, should "feel the energy of the rabbits," a statement I assume is a decorous way of saying, go forth and 'breed like rabbits.'
Unlike in Australia, the land of my birth, where rabbits have run riot for a hundred years, wild rabbits are a rare sight in Taiwan – I have only ever seen one, and that was the hare I caught in my headlight beam on an isolated mountain track. That was likely the formosan hare (Lepus sinensis formosus) photo and more info here, as far as I know that is the only wild rabbit/hare in Taiwan.
Unlike rabbits hares do not reveal their presence by their telltale housing (they don't live in burrows), and they are nocturnal, which of course make them harder to spot. But apart from that their just don't seem to be many stories of encounters with hares; it was hard enough just to find a single photo on the internet (above link), so I wonder if it is not just the humans that are less than prolific procreators – perhaps even the rabbits of Taiwan are not breeding like rabbits?
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