Small animals are mostly victims. At least in the media. They are run over, drowned or abandoned, torn by dogs, mutilated by agricultural machinery and poisoned by nasty loners. Anyone who is a victim so often must one day become a perpetrator. He has to fight back – if only for reasons of self-preservation.
Maybe that’s what the wild rabbits in Ingolstadt’s Klenzepark thought. Perhaps they didn’t think anything at all, instead they had no choice in their need. More than 1000 of them live there on just 20 hectares. The human-capitalist apparatus of oppression forced the poor animals to live in such a confined space that the Rubicon and the Danube were now crossed. Anyone who now believes that plenty of children gather there to distribute the vegetables lovingly carved by their parents from the lunch box to the animals is wrong. Children should avoid the place, just like adults. Because there is danger to life and limb.
Not because crazy experiments made Monty Python’s vision of the killer rabbit a reality, but because the animals have undermined roots and climbing frames and now trees and metal frames are no longer safe. True to the motto: “All trees fall down if your strong arm wants it.” Granted, the rhyme still needs to be worked on. But no revolution starts with folklore.
Until now, the animals have been able to defend themselves against various attempts to drive them away. But now the city is unpacking the hard bandages as the extended arm of children, pensioners and other oppressors longing for local recreation: Ferret volunteer corps are unleashed on the rabbits. They drive the rabbits out of their burrows and then they are caught and “appropriately killed”. The carcasses are used to train other animals of oppression (hunting dogs). Perhaps it is the fate of Bavarian revolutions that folklore remains of them rather than permanent upheavals. But that would be something. Hopefully the Ingolstadt wild rabbits still have enough time for one or two Gstanzl.