Jimmy Carter rabbit incident

The rabbit swimming away from the President

The Jimmy Carter rabbit incident, dubbed the "killer rabbit" attack by the media, involved a swamp rabbit that swam toward then–U.S. President Jimmy Carter's fishing boat on April 20, 1979. The incident caught press imagination after Carter's press secretary mentioned the event to a correspondent months later.

Background

President Carter had gone on a solo fishing expedition in his hometown of Plains, Georgia. According to Carter a rabbit being chased by hounds "jumped in the water and swam toward my boat. When he got almost there, I splashed some water with a paddle."^[1]

Upon returning to his office, Carter's staff did not believe his story, insisting that rabbits could not swim, or that they would never approach a person threateningly.^[2] However, the incident was captured on footage taken by a White House photographer.^[3]

Media accounts and public perception

Jody Powell, Carter's press secretary, mentioned the event to Associated Press correspondent Brooks Jackson on August 28, 1979, who filed the story with the wire service the following day. The story, entitled "Bunny Goes Bugs: Rabbit Attacks President", ran on August 30, 1979, and was carried on the front page of The Washington Post, though the White House's refusal to release the photograph resulted in the newspaper using a cartoon parody of the Jaws poster labeled "PAWS" as its illustration.^[4][5][6] The White House still refused to release the photograph of the incident to the media until it turned up during the Reagan administration and the story saw a revival.

Carter shooing away the rabbit, at far right

In his 1986 book The Other Side of the Story, Powell recounted the story as follows:

Upon closer inspection, the animal turned out to be a rabbit. Not one of your cutesy, Easter Bunny-type rabbits, but one of those big splay-footed things that we called swamp rabbits when I was growing up.

The animal was clearly in distress, or perhaps berserk. The President confessed to having had limited experience with enraged rabbits. He was unable to reach a definite conclusion about its state of mind. What was obvious, however, was that this large, wet animal, making strange hissing noises and gnashing its teeth, was intent upon climbing into the Presidential boat.

The incident with the rabbit became fodder for political and ideological opponents who wanted to frame Carter's presidency as hapless and enfeebled, although the event's proximity to the Stateside release of the comedy feature film Monty Python and the Holy Grail, which includes scenes of a killer rabbit slaying humans, led to some people describing Carter as having "fended off a killer rabbit" instead.^[7]

The incident was parodied in 1980 in a song by the folk singer Tom Paxton entitled "I Don't Want a Bunny Wunny".^[8]

Humor columnist Dave Barry has often referred to the "enormous swimming rabbit" incident in his writings. In Dave Barry Slept Here: A Sort of History of the United States, he names it the uncontested single most memorable event of Carter's presidency.

See also

• George H. W. Bush vomiting incident
• Bill Clinton haircut controversy
• Dick Cheney hunting incident
• Rabbit of Caerbannog

References