The Runners-up in the Cadbury Bunny Tryouts Are All Amazing Animals Who Have Suffered Greatly and Overcome an Abundance of Adversity in Order Just to Have Competed

 "Man is the only animal that consumes without producing. He does not give milk, he does not lay eggs, he is too weak to pull the plough, he cannot run fast enough to catch rabbits. Yet he is lord of all the animals."

-- George Orwell 

A lucky to still be alive one-eyed cat named Crash from Boise recently won the Cadbury Bunny Tryouts. (See Cat Defender post of May 30, 2023 entitled Crash, Who Lived Through Being Run Down and Left for Dead by a Hit-and-Run Motorist, Has Now Been Reduced to Impersonating a Rabbit and Shilling for Cadbury's Creme Eggs.")

Although he may have taken home top honors, there were nine other remarkable animals who made it all the way to the finals. One can question the appropriateness of forcing them to have donned bunny ears and to have impersonated a rabbit in order to sell chocolates, but there cannot be any disputing that all of them are indeed very special animals who have overcome much in their lives and, above all, who are richly deserving of having their stories told.

Although the information to be found online about some of them is rather sketchy, here is a brief look, in no particular order, at each of them.

Stewie Vuitton

Stewie Vuitton is a five-year-old miniature therapy horse who resides at Lifting Spirits Miniature Therapy Horses in Andover, thirty-nine kilometers north of Boston. He was purchased by the charity nineteen months ago at an auction and there is no telling what might have become of him if he had fallen into the wrong hands.

Today, he and nine other miniature horses spend their days spreading cheer at the more than one-hundred-twenty-five institutions, such as hospitals, schools, and veterans' centers, that they visit each year throughout New England. "Horses are amazing because they mirror exactly what the person is going through," Toni Hadad of Lifting Spirits told WBZ-TV of Boston on March 10th. (See "Andover Therapy Horse Stewie Vuitton Is Finalist in Cadbury Bunny Contest.") "They have so many health benefits."

Principally among them they are known to be able to reduce stress and anxiety and thereby to lower heart and breathing rates. Plus, they are easy to work with as well as to train.

Described as a little horse with a big heart, Stewie is said to love eating green apples when is not on the road working.

Although miniature horses also are raced, it is not known if they are being abused and killed to the same extent as thoroughbreds. For example, in the recently concluded Triple Crown, two horses died at Belmont Park on Long Island which hosted the Belmont Stakes. Those deaths followed on the heels of one death at Pimlico Race Course in Baltimore, which hosted the Preakness, and a dozen deaths during the month of May at Churchill Downs in Lexington, which hosted the Kentucky Derby.

According to data supplied by Horse Racing Wrongs of Albany, one-hundred fifty-seven thoroughbreds have died so far in 2023. If that sounds bad, the death toll was even greater last year when nine-hundred-one horses died.

In 2021, nine-hundred-seventy-seven of these magnificent animals perished at racetracks. (See Global News of Toronto, June 12, 2023, "Deadly Triple Crown Season Ends with Two More Horse Deaths at Belmont Park")

Stewie Relaxing Off Duty  

In response to the widespread carnage occurring at this nation's racetracks, Congress in 2020 enacted the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act wherein it invested the authority to regulate thoroughbred racing in the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority, a private entity. In doing so, it gave oversight to the Federal Trade Commission which was to approve its regulations but not to have any role in drafting them.

In 2022, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans struck down the statute by arguing that under the private non-delegation doctrine Congress could not delegate its authority to a private body. (See Find Law, December 2, 2022, "Fifth Circuit Cites Non-Delegation Doctrine in Declaring Horseracing Regulation Body Unconstitutional.")

Whether Congress was even halfway serious about protecting the lives of thoroughbreds or merely enacted the law knowing full well that the courts would declare it to be unconstitutional is a debatable point. That is especially the case given that all politicians are liars and crooks who take huge payoffs from the same financial concerns that they are supposed to be honestly regulating while simultaneously feeding the public a load of bullshit.

Already delicate animals to begin with thanks to centuries of cruel inbreeding, many of these horribly abused horses are doped up and then run to death, often under inclement conditions, in claiming races. Since the horse racing industry stubbornly refuses to police itself, it is way past time that concerned members of the public and conscientious animal protection groups pressured Congress into enacting a nationwide ban on all thoroughbred racing instead of merely offering beau geste to all the abused and dying horses.

As it is practiced in the United States, it is not a sport but rather legalized abuse and murder! Sadly, the mere fact that this hideously cruel sport continues to endure is proof that the American public is every bit as callous and uncaring as the owners of these animals. Consequently, this barbaric practice is likely to continue. 

Cypress

Cypress is a two-year-old North American beaver from Farmerville, one-hundred-forty-five kilometers east of Shreveport, whose life was saved by wildlife rehabilitator Leslie Greene of River Wildlife Rescue, also in Farmerville, after a landowner had cruelly demolished her dam.

"I had bought some bunny ears, and I put them on one of the beavers and thought it was cute" she told KTVE-TV of El Dorado, Arkansas, on March 9th. (See "Farmerville Wildlife Rescue Beaver Is Up for 2023 Cadbury Bunny.") "I'm just going to take a quick little photo and put it  on social media and just say the Easter Beaver instead of the Easter Bunny, and somebody had suggested we try out for the Cadbury commercial, and so we did, and she made it to the Top Ten, which is amazing because this is the first time Cadbury ever had a wildlife species in the Top Ten for the Cadbury Tryouts."

Nicknamed Diva Beava, Cypress is described as being sassy and sweet. She enjoys playing with her sister, taking afternoon swims in the swim tanks, and eating carrots as she is doing in the photo above.

Ever since the bloodthirsty and greedy-as-hell Limey imperialists first set foot in North America beavers have been valued only for their pelts. In fact, fur trappers did such a bang-up job of killing them that by the 1880's they were all but extinct in the United States.

In his 1990 novel, Buffalo Girls, Larry McMurtry recounts the story of mountain men Jim Ragg and Bartle Bone who over the course of thirty years trapped and killed so many of the animals that they were eventually forced into joining Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show in order to make a living. While on a tour of Angleterre, Ragg became aware of a beaver exhibit at the London Zoo and thereafter he became a regular visitor during his non-working hours. Whether his devotion was due more to nostalgia for his lost livelihood or a belated appreciation for the merits of his many victims is unclear.

It has been a long time in coming, but attitudes are slowly beginning to change and some farmers, ranchers, and landowners are starting to realize that, far from being pests, beavers are actually highly beneficial and valuable residents of this fragile planet. Among their many benefits, their dam building helps to widen creeks into wetlands and thereby creating new meadows and homes for all sorts of species from salmon to sage grouse.

Their dams not only purify the water but also store it for use by livestock and wildlife, especially during droughts. The meadows that they create additionally store carbon and serve as buffers against wildfires. (See The New York Times, September 6, 2022, "It Was War. Then, a Rancher's Truce with Some Pesky Beavers Paid Off.") 

Even on those rare occasions when it does eventually arrive, enlightenment is awfully slow in coming and it seldom ever achieves anything remotely approaching universality. For instance, the animal-annihilators at the diabolical USDA's Wildlife Services still shoot, snare, and trap more than thirty-one-thousand of these wonderful animals each year. (See Cat Defender post of September 14, 2005 entitled "The USDA's Wildlife Services Exterminates Millions of Animals Each Year at the Behest of Capitalists.")

The ultra-right wing United States Supreme Court is not doing the animals any favors either. For instance, on May 25th in Sackett v the Environmental Protection Agency it stripped the defendant of some of its regulatory authority over wetlands that it had been exercising ever since 1972 under the Clean Water Act.

Private property owners now have considerably more leeway in order to develop wetlands and that certainly cannot be beneficial to beavers. (See the Los Angeles Times, May 25, 2023, "Supreme Court Limits EPA Protection for Wetlands, Favoring Property Rights over Clean Water.")

The animals are in even direr straits in South America. For example, with the assistance and full support of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, Argentina and Chile are currently in the middle of a fifteen-year plan to extirpate one-hundred-thousand of them in Tierra del Fuego. 

In an all too familiar story that has been played out time and time again around the world, the two countries  imported twenty to fifty of the animals from Canada in 1946 in order to be farmed for their valuable fur. By way of saying thank you to them, they now have branded them as an invasive species and condemned them to die allegedly because they are cutting down too many trees while building their dams. (See the National Post of Toronto, November 16, 2016, "Just in Time for Trudeau's Visit, Argentina Declares Pitiless War on Canadian Beaver.")

If that scenario sounds familiar it is because it is almost identical to the cruel fate that has befallen gray wolves in the United States. Hunted to extinction in the lower forty-eight states by 1948, the Clinton Administration imported some of them from Canada in the 1990's and reintroduced them to the American west.

The welcome mat did not remain out long for them, however, in that the United States Fish and Wildlife Service under Barack Obama wasted little time in divesting them of their protections under the Endangered Species Act and as a result during the past decade more than a thousand of them have been mercilessly gunned down by Wildlife Services, bounty hunters, ranchers, farmers, thrill seekers, and all sorts of other cretins. (See Cat Defender post of June 23, 2017 entitled "For Eight Long and Tortuous Years, Barack Obama and His Bloodthirsty Henchmen Within the Federal Bureaucracy Waged a Ruthless, No-Holds-Barred War on Cats.")

If Canadians cared anything about their wild animals, which they quite obviously do not, they would stop selling them to the Argentinians, Chileans and, above all, Americans who are only going to nakedly exploit and abuse them in the short term before, sooner or later, extirpating them. (See Cat Defender post of January 21, 2018 entitled "Steve Ecklund's Savage Killing of a Cougar and Vainglorious Gloating, Strutting, and Preening Are Resoundingly Applauded by Canada's Ever Obliging Media and Complicitous Universities.")

Ping

Ping, now fifteen-months-old, had a rude and terrifying introduction to the world of humans. When she was only a few months old, her previous owner taped up the American Pekin in a cardboard box and left her outside a Dumpster on a busy street in Sioux Falls.

All sorts of individuals from all walks of life and in possession of varying amounts of coin think absolutely nothing about dumping animals on the street, in the woods, and even in garbage receptacles. Consequently these animals, barring last-minute miracles, are destined to suffer horribly and to die excruciatingly painful deaths, but that does not faze their former owners in the least little bit. 

Even the petit fait that in many instances they had paid either a breeder, a pet shop, or a shelter for them is likewise of no consequence to them. They simply want rid of them as expeditiously as possible.

Luckily for Ping, a female Good Samaritan stumbled upon her plight and delivered her to the Sioux Falls Area Humane Society. Her stunning reversal in fortunes continued when she later was adopted by Teri Jo Oleon who operates Smoken Dakota Kennels in Sioux Falls.

"Ever since I was a little girl, I'd be bringing home all kinds of animals and birds. I even had a family of foxes in our back field," she informed the Argus Leader of Sioux Falls on March 14th. (See "Meet the Sioux Falls Rescue Duck Who's a Finalist in the Cadbury Bunny Tryouts.") "This is a kind of lifelong obsession with helping animals."

True to her word, Olean cares for five dogs, two cats, a raccoon, and three other ducks in addition to Ping. It is unclear, however, if Ping lives at home with her or at her shelter.

Ping and Teri Jo Olean

Regardless of the particulars, she appears to have made an impressive recovery from the shabby way that her previous owner had treated her. "Ping lives for cuddling with her dog siblings, purring and laying an egg every morning," Olean added to KDLT-TV of Sioux Falls earlier on March 6th. (See "South Dakota Duck Selected as Finalist for Cadbury Bunny Tryouts.") "She feels her best when wearing bling necklaces."

She additionally is said to like dressing up and dining on mealworms. As a highly sociable duck, she also likes "talking" with and being around people.

Reprehensibly, most other members of her species are not nearly as fortunate as Ping. For example, according to the November 20, 2021 edition of Poultry Science, a staggering two-hundred-million Pekin ducks are raised for slaughter each year and that is just in the United States and the European Union. (See "Setting Research Driven Duck Welfare Standards: A Systematic Review of Pekin Duck Welfare Research")

Without ladling on the histrionics about how cruel, barbaric, and utterly morally indefensible it is to consume meat, it is sufficient to say only that any animal that possesses the intelligence, personality, heart, loving nature, and ability to get along with her mates, other animals, and humans as Ping does is richly deserving of being treasured, revered, and protected instead of being either cruelly abandoned or slaughtered for dinner.

In that respect, Ping is a wonderful ambassador for her species. One can only hope that her existence will have some salutary effect upon the desperate plight of ducks everywhere.

C'est-à-dire, hopefully some individuals will look at her and realize what a wonderful animal she and all ducks are and stop abusing, slaughtering, and eating them. Such an awareness also should include a refusal to purchase products that are manufactured out of their feathers and other body parts.

Redbird

To say that Redbird has been put through the wringer would be a gross understatement. What she has been forced to endure during her young life has been far worse than that.

"She was part of a hoarding situation in Baltimore County," Jennifer Wilson of Terra Alta, fifty-two kilometers southeast of Morgantown in West Virginia, told the Bluefield Daily Telegraph on March 11th. (See "Redbird the Guinea Pig Is in the Finals for a National Cadbury Bunny Commercial.") "Animal Control seized a huge number of small animals and Metropolitan Guinea Pig Rescue (MGPR) seized thirty-six guinea pigs."

Compounding an already dreadful situation to begin with, she was blind, malnourished, and depressed. Being a longtime fan of the species, Wilson regularly monitors MGPR's Facebook page and when she learned of Redbird's desperate plight she knew that she had no choice but to act and to do so with alacrity.

"...when they (MGPR) first posted her picture, she was so sad. And she was actually so depressed that even though she was  blind, she would sit facing a corner and she wouldn't move," she informed the Bluefield Daily Telegraph. "She didn't want to face the world. And when I saw her photo, I knew that I could make her happy."

It was not an easy feat for her to have pulled off, but Wilson was every bit as true to her word as the stars that shine at night. She did, however, have to wait five months before she was able to have finally adopted Redbird. "She was so sick. She was malnourished. They had to syringe nutrient-dense food into her," she related to the Bluefield Daily Telegraph. "It's a special thing for guinea pigs that has what they need and you kind of force them to eat it. (Was) she very bad? Yes! Yes!"

Along about that same time, Redbird gave birth to a pair of stillborn pups that also were blind and the heartbreak of that almost finished her off for good. "She searched and searched the cage for them," Wilson told to the Bluefield Daily Telegraph. "You see a lot of horrible things in rescue, but the director said that was the most pitiful thing she'd ever seen."

Somehow and some way Redbird found deep within herself the resources to hold on until things got a little bit better for her and in June of 2021 she was well enough for Wilson to have taken her home with her and that has made all the difference in the world to her. "Once I was able to bring her home, it seemed everything changed for her. We have a very large guinea pig set-up and she started running around the cage," Wilson informed the Bluefield Daily Telegraph. "It almost felt like to me like she felt she was getting a new start. She had been at the rescue, so she had been getting very good care, but it seemed to me like she knew she was getting a new home."

At Wilson's house, she lives in a cage that is lined with baby bumper pads and her food bowl has an extended bottom so that she can find it with her feet. Best of all, she is no longer alone in this big and terribly frightening world.

"She has a best friend who lives with her and her name is Pippi, and she makes Redbird great," Wilson told the Bluefield Daily Telegraph. "One time she was asleep and we (she and her husband, Perry) gave Pippi a treat to make her feel special and she ate half of it and went and woke up Redbird so she could have the other half."

Pippi, who also came from a rescue group, now serves as Redbird's eyes and has completed her long overdue happiness. She now clucks when she runs and is described as a "happy girl."

Since she did not allow any of the numerous bad things that happened to her stop her, Redbird has done likewise with her handicap. "She is blind, but she doesn't know it because nobody has told her and she is so feisty and bossy," Wilson concluded to the Bluefield Daily Telegraph. "Oh yes, she is."

She also is a truly amazing animal and a survivor and Wilson is to be commended for her compassion and for standing by Redbird. Quite obviously, all the love and hard work that she showered on her was well worth it and then some. 

Bodhi

Like Redbird, Bodhi had a rough start in life but he, too, eventually landed on all four paws and today he has a home with Katie Ross in Pepper Pike, thirty-four kilometers east of Cleveland. 

Not much is known about his early days other than that he wound up at a rehabilitation center where someone cut off his left ear and staffers nearly starved him to death. Eventually he was transferred to the Columbus House Rabbit Society in, it is believed, Westerville, two-hundred-twenty-one kilometers south of Pepper Pike.

"They (Columbus House) told us he had a clean cut off of his ear, so we assume that somebody cut off his ear," Ross told Spectrum News1 of Columbus on March 14th. (See "Rescued Rabbit Could Be the Next Cadbury Bunny.") "We're not one-hundred per cent sure, but it has healed now."

As horrific, painful, and terrifying as that must have been, being starved nearly to death at the rehabilitation center was not any fun either. "Essentially, I think he was starving because he started eating the bedding off the bottom of his cage to survive," Ross added to Spectrum News1.

The important thing, however, is that he persevered. The same most definitely cannot be said for another lionhead rabbit named Teddy from London who was found decapitated but with his head nowhere in sight. Six-months later his missing head, which obviously had been refrigerated, mysteriously turned up in his garden in pristine condition.

He is believed to have been the victim of the still at large Croydon Cat Killer even though Scotland Yard still stubbornly insists that no much villain exists that that the dozens of feline killings and mutilations that have occurred over the past few years have been the work of foxes. (See the Daily Mail, September 29, 2018, "They Framed Mr. Fox" and Cat Defender post of November 7, 2022 entitled "In a Sad and Violent Dénouement to a Long and Happy Life, Cleo Is Brutally Slain and Mutilated in a South London Park, Reigniting Fears That the Croydon Cat Killer May Have Struck Again.")

Thanks to Ross's compassionate intervention, Bodhi's life has turned around for the better as is witnessed by him being the only rabbit to have made it to the finals of the Cadbury Bunny Tryouts. Described as a free-range rabbit, he now has the run of her residence and his freedom.

"He seemed (sic) to like the living room the most because he's very social," she told Spectrum News1. He also enjoys bananas, taking naps, and making new friends. 

"He needed someone to take care of him and I needed him as well," is how that she explained her decision to adopt him to Spectrum News1. "If you show them (rabbits) the love that they deserve, they will be nice to you. And they are good, good pets."

She additionally expressed her appreciation to Cadbury for shining the national spotlight on abused animals like Bodhi. "It's a great contest and it advocates for all those cute animals that may not have had a great life before, but now they do," she concluded to Spectrum News1. "Everyone's just been showing us a lot of respect, so it's really fun."

Timmy

Timmy is another animal that is lucky to still be alive. Orphaned while still a Rambouillet lamb and unable to walk due an infection, he was destined for the dinner table until he was rescued from a farm in rural Utah by kindhearted Darcy Smith of the Funky Chicken Animal Sanctuary in Vacaville, eighty-nine kilometers northwest of San Francisco.

Disgracefully, even the veterinary medical profession was lined up against him. "Four different vets told me that he needed to be euthanized, that he would never walk again," Smith told KOVR-TV of Sacramento on March 7th. (See "Vacaville Sheep Named Finalist in Annual Cadbury Bunny Contest.") "But I knew he would."

It took a while and some doing and Timmy was forced to start out by wearing prostheses before graduating to braces but today he does not need any of those artificial supports and is able to not only walk but also to run and to even hop on his own. For example, in the video that Smith submitted to Cadbury he can be seen wearing bunny ears while delivering Creme Eggs to the other twenty or so animals that reside at the sanctuary.

"It's amazing how far he's come," she added to KOVR-TV. (A heartwarming video of Timmy's trials and tribulations while learning to walk can be found at the KOVR-TV article cited supra.) 

"Timmy has always dreamt of being the Cadbury Easter bunny. He has been training for the position for a long time," she told the Vacaville Reporter on March 7th. (See "Rescued Bay Area Sheep Timmy Aims to Become National Celebrity.") "He took many lessons from the chickens, ducks, turkeys, and even the emu on how to hide eggs. He worked on his hopping ability and even ate carrots at every meal."

He also is an experienced performer. For instance, in 2022 he appeared on the reality show, The Wizard of Paws, with Derrick Campana.

Whenever he is not busy with other things, he enjoys playing with his roommate, Peggy, a goat. His favorite snack is, not surprisingly, animal crackers.

As far as Smith is concerned, she is totally committed to the animals that she so diligently cares for at her sanctuary. "It's a labor of love and I can't imagine doing anything else," she vowed to KOVR-TV. "I love these babies so much!"

By proving wrong a quartet of veterinarians who were so eager to have condemned Timmy to an early grave, she also has once again exposed the practice of veterinary medicine to be an utterly despicable fraud. As far as large animal practitioners are concerned, they can be dismissed as little more than pimps and whores for meat and fur producers.

For example, famed veterinarian and celebrated author James Herriot never once questioned any of the cruelties and crimes that farmers in Yorkshire paid him to commit on their behalves. His only concern was the fattening of his wallet. (See The Best of James Herriot. (London: Readers Digest, 1982.)

Timmy and Darcy Smith

Whenever they are not serving at the beck and call of those who enslave and slaughter defenseless animals for their meat and fur, large animal veterinarians are doing the bidding of the owners of horses, greyhounds, and camels that are raced, zoos, circuses, the entertainment industry, and research laboratories. In short, such professionals are so vile as to be totally unfit to even be allowed to draw another breath.

Small animal practitioners are not much of an improvement and that is especially the case when it comes to their abhorrent mistreatment of cats and their owners. In fact, the vast majority of them do not even like cats and their owners.

Worst of all, practically none of them are competent to treat any of the myriad of deadly maladies that bedevil the lives of felines. Instead, they make their piles of money peddling vaccinations, sterilizations, and worthless microchips as well as by honing their extermination élan which they dishonestly insist upon calling euthanizations.

Even in cases of emergencies, about all that they offer grieving owners are sky-high admissions fees, a slew of worthless, albeit expensive, diagnostic tests, supportive care and, of course, black bags for the corpses of their cats. Most of these practitioners are even too lazy to show up at their surgeries on a regular basis; instead, they rely upon technicians and other assorted flunkies in order to do their jobs for them. (See Cat Defender post of August 14, 2021 entitled "Amazing Little Juicebox Overcomes Not Only a Near Fatal Mauling at the Hands of His Owners' Dog but also Penury and Being Cruelly Abandoned to Shift for Himself Inside the Snake Pit World of Veterinary Medicine.")

As it is practiced today in the United States, veterinary medicine is a crime perpetrated against small and large animals alike. It is not any consolation, but much the same thing can be said for the practice of both medicine and dentistry as they pertain to humans. 

The crimes of the veterinary profession are dwarfed only by those of sheep farmers who slaughter one-hundred-ninety-seven-thousand-five-hundred of these wonderful animals each year in the United States alone. It was Mark Twain, however, in his 1897 essay, The Lowest Animal, who pointed out the most striking difference between the higher animals and man when he wrote the following:

"Man is the only slave. And he is the only animal who enslaves. He has always been a slave in one form or another, and has always held other slaves in bondage under him in one way or another. In our day he is always some man's slave for wages, and does that man's work; and this slave has other slaves under him for minor wages, and they do his work. The higher animals are the only ones who exclusively do their own work and provide their own living."

George Orwell echoed those sentiments a few years later when he wrote the following in his 1945 novel, Animal Farm:

"Man is the only creature that consumes without producing. He does not give milk, he does not lay eggs, he is too weak to pull the plough, he cannot run fast enough to catch rabbits. Yet he is lord of all the animals."

That is to say, there is not an ounce of justice to be found anywhere in this world. Man usurped it all a long time ago when he found out that he could, literally, live high on the hog by exploiting and killing animals and he is not about to change either his thinking or behavior. He therefore is destined to remain for ever what he always has been: a killer, a thief and, above all, a bum.

Bunny

The problem is not nearly as prevalent as it is with cats but dogs also are hoarded. In fact, a now ten-year-old chihuahua named Bunny was rescued along with four other dogs from just such a situation in 2017.

She then was interned at the Tails Humane Society in DeKalb for a while before she was adopted by Jeff and Emily Meader of Naperville, fifty-three kilometers west of Chicago, who could not be happier with her. "She's always been a cute, quirky, photogenic like Muppet. She's white, she has this tongue that hangs out and has no teeth," is how hat Jeff described her to The Patch of Naperville on March 10th. (See "Naperville Rescue Dog Hopes to Land Starring Television Ad Role as Bunny.") "So she's just really cute, especially in an Easter outfit."

The Meaders decided to enter her in the contest because they believed that she was made for the part. "This is perfect for her... we thought this is a dog that could be enjoyed by America," he elucidated to The Patch. 

Furthermore, he readily admits that entering her has been a lot of fun. "It's not like a celebrity thing where we have downtown Naperville showing her off or anything like that...." he concluded to The Patch. "People who see her love her, and it's just nice to see it (Bunny's story) get out there."

The Tails Humane Society was equally pleased to see one of its alumna make it to the big time. "We're so excited for our alum (sic) Bunny to be a Cadbury finalist. She's already bringing awareness to pet adoption by making it this far in the contest," the charity's Michelle Grouper told The Patch. "We're also honored that if she wins, her humans will make a donation to Tails Humane Society and another animal shelter they support. We're voting for Bunny every day and hope everybody else does too."

Bunny is said to be fond of heated blankets, hoodies, and sweaters. Best of all, she loves playing with her doting owners who claim that she is "as sweet as a Cadbury creme egg."

Ande  

Ande is a five-year-old chinchilla from Springfield, Illinois, who lives with a young woman identified only by her first name as Haley and who, it is believed, works as a disc jockey for the local radio station, 99.7 FM. She took him in four years ago after his previous owner decided to give him up.

"I've had Ande for four years and he's always had the biggest smile," she told Neuhoff Media of Springfield on March 6th. (See "Neuhoff Springfield Pet Makes Cadbury Finals.") "It would be awesome to have a local pet celebrity from Springfield to represent us in a national commercial!"

Given that chinchillas are native to the Andes, he is also sometimes known as Mr. Anderson. Sticks and scratches are said to be two of his favorite things.

Ande and Haley

"He is full of personality and gives his current owner and those around him little tail wags and smiles, especially when he gets his favorite treat: dried rose petals," Haley confided to Neuhoff Media.

It is abominable, but approximately two-hundred-fifty-thousand chinchillas are killed worldwide each year for their valuable pelts.

Hunter

Seemingly no gathering of the animals for whatever the reason would ever be complete without the presence of at least one bluetick coonhound and in that respect the Cadbury Bunny Tryouts did not disappoint. Hunter is a three-year-old, black and white canine from Temple, one-hundred-eleven kilometers northwest of Philadelphia, who is owned by Megan and Alex Miller and their ten-year-old daughter, Brooklyn.

Sadly, Hunter's early days were anything but pleasant in that he was returned to the Brandywine Valley SPCA in West Chester, seventy-three kilometers south of Temple, not once but twice before the Miller family adopted him on Easter of 2021. "We had a lot of fun doing it (the contest) and we're happy to be part of showcasing (and) bringing light to rescued pets all over," Megan told The Reading Eagle on March 7th. (See "Berks County Dog in Cadbury Bunny Tryouts Contest Final Seeking Votes.")

Hunter is described as a fun dog who loves to be the center of attention.

The main thing to be learned from all of these wonderful animals, and the contest's ultimate winner, Crash, is that all animals are precious and that they should not only be allowed to live in peace but to be free from abuse and exploitation as well. Since man is so hellbent upon perpetrating violence and exploitation, he should confine his evildoing to his own species but he is far too cowardly and greedy to ever do that.

Secondly, those individuals who truly care about animals should at least consider concentrating their efforts and largess on those small rescue groups and sole proprietors who operate on the level and accordingly steer clear of the large phonies, such as the ASPCA, PETA, the Humane Society of the United States, and the American Humane Society (AHS) and its utterly hideous new spokeswoman, former jailbird and hag Martha Stewart.

A little over a year ago, she inexcusably allowed her cat, Princess Peony, to be eaten by four of her dogs. Furthermore, she did not even have the decency to bury her corpse but instead hired a trio of workmen to do the job for her. Quit obviously, she and the AHS are a perfect match. (See the Toronto Sun, April 4, 2022, "Martha Stewart's Cat Killed by Her Dogs.")

Thirdly, in addition to its totally unforgivable decision to lavish US$20,000 on the ASPCA, Cadbury USA is so cheap that it only gave the nine finalists a box of chocolates and a pair of official bunny ears as a consolation prize. Supposedly, Bunny and Hunter also received some type of a toy.

That is in spite of the fact that purchasing bunny ears, preparing photographs, videos, and a writing short essay cost each of the thousands of entrants a considerable amount of both money and effort and that does not even begin to include postage and packaging. It accordingly would not have killed the billionaires at Cadbury to have given each entrant a token US$100 in order to have helped defray their expenses.

Above all, the nine finalists richly deserved at the very least a consolation prize of US$500 each. Regrettably, Cadbury not only has its priorities all wrong but it is stingy, thoroughly lacking in all class, and does not even know the meaning of the word generosity.

Photos: Cadbury USA (Stewie, Cypress, Ping, Redbird, Bodhi, Timmy, Bunny, Ande, and Hunter), Katrina Kincade of WBZ-TV (Stewie), Teri Jo Oleon (Ping), the Vacaville Reporter (Timmy and Darcy Smith), and Neuhoff Media (Ande and Haley).