Watership Down by Richard Adams

So, I started Watership Down by Richard Adams on January 15th, paused on February 13th, picked it back up on February 25th and finally finished it on March 9th.  What a journey.  The pause was due to The Wrong Side of Goodbye by Michael Connelly - library books wait for no other.  When I heard the name of this book, who knows how long ago, I seriously thought it was a book about a Navy ship that sunk.  I mean, Watership Down - totally a Navy ship that sunk, right?  Well, no.  I never read the book before now, and I firmly believe the universe wanted me to read the book - there were several signs pointing me to it.  First - last August when The Husband and I were on vacation, we were in a class on harnessing your intuition and sitting next to a man who was holding a book.  One of the exercises we had to do in the class was to exchange an item we had with us with the person sitting next to us and then try to intuit why the item was held in high esteem (or not) by the other person.  Well, the man, his name was Quantrell, gave me his book, and when I opened my eyes after trying to intuit why it was important to him, I noticed the book was Watership Down.  So I asked him about it.

Turns out it is absolutely NOT about a Navy ship that sank.  It is about rabbits!!  Yes, rabbits!!  I'm a little obsessed with animals, so was kind of shocked to see this manly man reading a book about rabbits and not sunken Navy ships.  I was intrigued more after Quantrell told me a little about the book.  I made a mental note to pick it up soon to read.  Around the holidays last year, I was with my Step-Mother getting a massage at Burke Williams.  We were waiting in the quiet room for our appointments and a lady sat down next to me and pulled out a book to read while she was waiting for her appointment.  The book was.... wait for it....  Watership Down.  When I was gathering my things and packing for my trip home after Christmas, I took a look at the bookshelf in the room I was in at my parents' house.  And, right there in plain sight at my eye level was none other than...  wait for it....  Watership Down.  So, I took it from the bookshelf and brought it home with me and started reading it on January 15th.  The day before I started reading it, I was shopping at Anthropologie and everywhere I looked, I saw rabbits - rabbit mugs, rabbit hooks, rabbit tie backs, rabbit everything.  I mean, if this isn't the universe talking to me trying to get me to read this book, I don't know what it is.  Too much of a coincidence.

The book from my parents' bookshelf is old - printed in 1975, I think, and the print is miniscule.  I powered through it, but it was slow going.  I know I've heard references to Hazel and Fiver before, but had no context.  Well, now I do!  They are brothers, and rabbits, who live on the periphery of a warren in England.  Fiver is an odd lot, and has premonitions.  He has a premonition that something bad is going to happen to the warren.  He and Hazel go to the chief rabbit to tell him about Fiver's vision.  They are ostracized by the chief and kind of shuttled out of his audience.  Some other rabbits on the periphery come to learn about Fiver's premonition and a small group of rag-tag rabbits leave the warren.

This book tells the tale of that group.  Man, they overcome some serious shit.  Like snares, bad humans, rats, owls, dogs, cats, foxes, stoats (I learned that a stoat is like a weasel), birds, and more.  And, man, wait until you meet General Woundwort and the rabbits of Efrafa.  Talk about a despotic, evil lunatic and a crazy lot of rabbits.  This book was a page turner, especially toward the end, but since the words were so small, it took me a while to flip those pages.  I stayed up too late a few nights to "see what happened" in the book.  And, some shit happened, that's for sure.  You know what they say about cats - they have 9 lives - some of these rabbits did too.  I LOVED THIS BOOK!

I learned that it was made into an animated movie.  After a little search on the Google, I found THIS recent article that the BBC and Netflix are remaking it into a less violent version than the original because the original scars kids.  I couldn't find an original movie trailer, but found a few 3-minute "trailers" on YouTube.  It looks like an older cartoon - circa 1978 - but seems like it will be good.  And, yes, it looks violent.  This picture is from the article about the remake - that rabbit on the right sure looks scary and evil.  I mean, blood and saliva dripping from his mouth and body?  Yikes - wouldn't want to meet that scary rabid rabbit in a dark alley, or any alley for that matter.

I do want to watch the original movie, but have been advised to do it when I'm in a good mood...  Yikes!  I loved the book though - great writing, wonderful rabbit characters, enthralling, endearing.  And most decidedly not about a sunken Navy ship.