Rabbit full of holes
Holes that might or might not have rabbits in them. HOLY RABBITS Batman!
You know how there is all this advice on how to... People have written so much, videoed so much, and yet there are still so many stupid people around! Not all advice or knowledge is good and if you are looking for advice from some yahoo on Tik Toc, you might already struggle with making good choices. If I didn't have a really smart girlfriend I'm sure I would traverse a few rabbit holes. Question, has anyone ever found a rabbit in a rabbit hole? I think “rabbit hole” is a good metaphor for following new and probably misleading information. I wonder who coined the phrase. I know I've never entertained the idea of trying to physically squeeze into a rabbit hole so you have that unknown factor going on. How deep is it? Are there more tunnels that split apart? Does one lead to Cthulhu? Hey! is this really a gopher hole???
My only real experience with a real rabbit hole was when I was probably 4 or 5 years old, maybe 6? The family was visiting my grandparents. Gramps was mowing the lawn when we pulled in to the driveway. We had just got out of the Buick '67 Skylark as he was finished up a pass with the mower in the front yard after witch he turned the push-mower off. He came over to greet us and then mentioned that he ran over a rabbit's nest in the middle of the yard. I was immediately excited and asked where. He gestured to what looked like a divot in the last row he had just cut. I ran over and pulled a thick layer of cut grass away and there were about 4 baby rabbits hunkered down in a little hole. They hadn't moved and weren't moving as I almost peed myself with excitement. They were beautiful and cute and looked absolutely precious. They also looked scared. I scooped one up and all the others scattered. The one I picked up didn't move but I could feel it's little heart beating so rapidly that I put it back down and it hopped off. None of them ran very far.
I remember wanting to take them in so they could be my pets. My pre-school class had a big pet rabbit they just let run around the class room so you could pet it when you wanted. I thought I could do that but my parents were totally on to my thoughts and gently redirected me to grandma and cookies while they explained these rabbits belonged outside and I could enjoy them whenever we came to visit. This totally made sense to me and I saw them and petted them the next few times we visited before they were too big and wary of humans. I never felt loss or had any worry about them at any point. I was a little kid and I still got it. The rabbits were wild and were where they naturally should be. But that rabbit hole was not deep or mysterious!
The metaphor of a rabbit hole still seems to make sense since everyone knows what we mean when we say it. I think it's neutral and depends on the content. If you went down what you thought was a rabbit hole and found a snake, well, you are not in a rabbit hole. You are in a snake hole! There are probably rabbit holes about snakes though. I remember hearing about in the southern states you can ask for an orange soda but all sodas have a prefix of “Pepsi”. So even if you want say an A&W Root Beer, you ask for a Pepsi-A&W root beer. Or a Pepsi-7Up. I guess “rabbit hole” is like that to a degree. I think I went through a very brief phase in my early teens when I tried to use “Mc” as a prefix to words and phrases like, Mc-Wow! Or Mc-duh, Mc-seeya later alligator... Like I said, it was a very brief phase.
Why am I talking about rabbit holes? I just decided to explore my tangent and see where it lead. It has lead here, more toward the end of the note this week.
Whoa, Donnie Darko rabbit you got some competition for freakiest rabbit now!
And I'm pretty sure "down the rabbit hole" came about because of Alice in Wonderland, because she follows the White Rabbit down his hole and falls so far down she comes out the other end into a whole new world she'd never before seen. Hence the suggestion in the phrase that you're falling DEEP and into something different from the world you knew before going down it.