The Life and Times of MadRabbit, in Six Acts
MadRabbit, one of the largest members of the Megalonychidae family, was born in 1936 in the main tent of the Laughing Octopus Family Circus & Spit-Pig Roast-Off held every January in the Ozark Mountains. The daughter of an itinerant Welsh lint farmer and an Eskimo mime, she was the youngest of eighteen children. It was on Valentine's day of that same year that sixteen of her siblings were crushed to death when a truckload of potatoes overturned on a freeway overpass, dumping its starchy cargo onto the unsuspecting family below.
That summer, Clytemnestra and Horace Rabbit, along with their two remaining daughters, set forth in covered wagons for the warm beaches of Fairbanks, Alaska. There they lived for six years in a shallow trench which they dug with their own shoes. One summer, MadRabbit wandered away from her parents during a truffle hunt and was raised by a family of moose until she was found and returned home in December of that year. Later she would swear that for years afterwards, she would sometimes hear the moose calling to her from the forest.
Captured by Mormon proselytes in 1943, the family was spirited away to Utah. They escaped six months later during the Great Granola Riots, and moved back to the Ozarks. There MadRabbit studied the ways of the elusive Blue Mountain People, mapping their territories and keeping painstakingly detailed logs of their various courtship rituals. It was during this time that she learned the true meaning of Christmas. Several years later, the family made their way to Rhode Island, where for eighteen months they lived on a square of damp newspaper.
Forced to flee the country in 1963, Horace, Clytemnestra, and the children sailed to Belguim in the cargo hold of the USS Fergenberger. There they eked out a living selling small trinkets which they had stolen from children. Arrested in 1978 on charges of larceny, indecent exposure, and abuse of power under the color of authority, the entire family was deported.
They next settled in Willmar, Minnesota, where they spent their days roaming the treetops by way of an elaborate network of wooden planks. MadRabbit would while away the days and months in the vast canopy of the midwestern forest, collecting bits of bark, plastic bags and discarded fast-food containers, and fashioning them into imaginary companions. When the loggers came, the family had to move on. They moved east, to a hick little burg in a big state. MadRabbit attended over twenty-seven different parochial schools over the next several years, finally graduating from Saint Tiffany's of the Unpleasant Odor High School.
MadRabbit moved to California to attend Stanford University on a rat-bagging scholarship. After receiving her degree in Studio Art she remained in Palo Alto, where she blended easily with the local shrubbery, allowing her to escape detection by predators. Her movements since leaving Palo Alto have been shrouded in a cloak of speculation, rumor and innuendo. Some say she went back to the mountains. Some say she never really existed. And some say that on a cool night, you can hear her in the foothills, making moose noises.
