BR'ER RABBIT HE AIN'T:

Sniper's odd 'duck in noose' from fable? (UPI, 10/25/02)

The story "The Rabbit, the Otter, and Duck Hunting" revolves around a boastful little rabbit that lassos a hapless duck, but the duck eventually triumphantly escapes from the snare and gets the best of his foe, and the rabbit ends up eating his own fur for perpetuity. [...]

The image of a duck trapped in a noose may have come from a story that is posted at various Internet sites. The story's origins are not clear, however it could be interpreted as the sniper, in the metaphoric form of the duck, escaping from the proverbial police noose.

In one version of the fable, the rabbit stealthily wades out into a river to capture a duck for dinner.

"He quickly fastened his noose around the neck of the closest duck," the story goes. "Startled, the duck began to struggle to get away and finally took off on his wings and dragged the rabbit out of the water after him."

"Now it was the rabbits turn to be startled. And boy was he. He held on to the noose and was taken high into the air. Higher and higher he went. All of a sudden, he lost his grip on the noose and down he fell into the middle of an old hollow Sycamore tree without a hole in the bottom to get out."

Some versions of the story end with the rabbit eventually getting out of the Sycamore stump while others leave him trapped in it. All, however, concede that the rabbit was reduced to consuming his own fur in order to survive.

"He stayed in there so long that he had to start eating his own fur," the story says, "as rabbits still do to this day when they are starved."

Apropos of nothing, there was an old movie, I can't remember the title, where an old man (Edward Arnold or Lionel Barrymore) or his profoundly annoying grandson tricks Death into staying in a sycamore tree when he comes to claim his next victim.
Posted by Orrin Judd at October 25, 2002 8:03 PM