One day in school my English teacher asked a fellow student to explain the significance of chapter three in the Grapes of Wrath. Fortunately she called on the eminently brilliant Brad Setzer who suggested that the chapter, ostensibly about a turtle trying to survive as it crossed a road, was not only a synopsis for the rest of the book but that it represented the very struggle of life itself.

Compare that fictional tale with the recent news about an overturned rabbit truck that deposited huge numbers of the fuzzy creatures on a road near Budapest:

“There are thousands of them on the road but they’re not using their newfound freedom well; they’re just sitting around, eating grass and enjoying the sun,” [highway patrol spokesman] Galik told Reuters.

Are we now less like the struggling turtle and more like rabbits sitting on the motorway, dazed and confused by the concept of freedom?

Before you decide, note the conclusion of the real story:

By midday, 4,400 bunnies had been rounded up, but 100 were still roaming the fields surrounding the highway.

“Those 100 are free to go. We will not collect them,” Galik said.

The ending wasn’t so happy for the ones that were recaptured. They were expected to complete the trip to a slaughterhouse, authorities said.

What would Steinbeck say?

Brad has since moved on to discussion of more mundane things, if you ask me:

I also suspect the impact of inappropriate currency pegs – like the de facto currency union between the world’s biggest oil importer and the world’s biggest oil exporter – is an under-reported story.

Much more fun to report about bunnies on the loose.