Blah, Blah, Blah . . . Look At That Bunny!

That was my reaction when I was flipping through a slide show on Newsweek's website devoted to "monster" animals. Big frogs, big snakes, big dogs. (One somewhat interesting cat.) Dull, dull, dull. And then I found Herman. He's more than three feet long and weighs upwards of 22 pounds.

Though Herman lives in Berlin with his owner, Hans Wanger, he calls to mind another giant rabbit that was terrorizing Northern England last year. Known as the were-rabbit (after the giant Wallace and Gromit character), the monstrous beast ripped up gardens for months, leaving huge bite marks in tender turnips and footprints as big as a deer's. The villagers hired two trained marksman to do away with the were-rabbit, but it disappeared without a trace sometime last summer. Let's hope it moved to a town that's a little less precious about its gardens.