Furious George: You can take the girl out of the farm...

Bunny! Not everyone in the farming community is as excited about rabbits as Dom George's lovely wife.

I'm pleased to announce we have a new addition to the family and the wife is beside herself with joy. She dotes on the little creature and makes sure it's having the best possible start in life, no questions.

I was prompted to write about the tubby little bundle of joy over the weekend when I read that on July the 2nd 1997, the government announced it wouldn't allow the release of the Rabbit Calicivirus Disease, or RCD. Yes, the new family member is a rabbit.

If the missus showed just half the love and affection she bestows on that little bastard we'd all be basking in a cradle of joy akin to the something out of Haight Ashbury in 1967. Alas, the rest of us have taken a back seat to the rotund 'Flopsy', aka The Ol' Floppo, The Flopster, The Flopmeister, Flop Diggity and B-Rabbit.

It brings the total amount of animals in our modest suburban household to four. Two cats, a dog and now a rabbit. The wife grew up on a farm and had numerous pets; cats, rabbits, ducks and even a lamb. There were probably more but I generally tune out after a while... Anyway, the point is it's really a classic old case of you can take the girl out of the farm... yadda, yadda, yadda.

The problem is she no longer resides on a farm, but in a way I don't think she ever really left. I've never lived on a farm but now I feel I am.

However, there's a wonderful irony at play here as well. While Flopsy is a specially bred domesticated pet rabbit, the little buggers have played a massive part in her family's life.

I'm a sucker for a good yarn and I've spent many an evening with beer in hand listening to how the family came to be where they are. It turns out her Scottish immigrant forefathers were qualified and brave enough to work on a number of big construction projects. They used the money to buy land that the government of the day was carving up and dishing out to those with enough pounds in the bank.

The problem was the Central Otago farmland was barren so the only thing to do was kill rabbits and collect the bounty for the skins. Nevertheless, it proved to be a lucrative business and soon the land was able to be farmed. They made a great fist of it, acquired more land and became a classic New Zealand farming family.

Fast forward a few decades and rabbits were essentially a plague on the land, costing the country tens of millions of dollars in lost agricultural production, not to mention millions more in hunting and poisoning programmes.

RCD had proved to be an effective method overseas but the Ministry of Agriculture said they didn't know enough about the effects and halted its release.

This raised the ire of South Island farmers and in August 1997 RCD was discovered on four farms near Cromwell. The farms were quarantined but the virus had spread before the authorities could do anything meaningful.

The major impediment to success, however, was the 'home-brew' RCD, as farmers blended infected rabbit livers in food processors and spread infected carrots. Rabbits became immune to the disease and despite the government legalising it, indiscriminate use rendered it virtually useless. Rabbits started like breeding like rabbits again.

All of this troublesome history obviously hasn't quelled the wife's love of rabbits, although I must say this was a much more wise choice of pet than the dog she brought home a few years ago. This thing is an abomination - a hand-bag dog that's an insult to hand-bag dogs.

I think it was dropped on its head when it was a puppy and has become such a loathsome creature I occasionally encourage it to play in the traffic.

It has no idea though; I think its blind. It's definitely stupid. I wonder if there's a small dog version of RCD?