Bushy Hare

Bushy Hare is an animated Bugs Bunny Cartoon made in 1949, released in 1950, by Robert McKimson. Bugs winds up switched with a baby kangaroo and has to deal with 'Nature Boy', an aborigine who is hunting Bugs. The title is a play on "bushy hair" along with aborigines stereotypically being from "the bush" country. It is the only cartoon where Hippety Hopper (who makes a cameo at the end) speaks (with one line); like Bugs, Hippety is voiced by Mel Blanc.

Plot

Bugs pops out in Golden Gate Park and encounters a man whom he initially thinks is a 'bad guy', but who asks Bugs to hold on to his balloons while he ties his shoelaces. Bugs complies, but soon finds himself drifting off into the ocean. After commenting that "something's gotta happen pretty soon", that 'something' is a stork delivering a baby joey to a kangaroo. The joey bears a strong resemblance to Hippity Hopper, a McKimson character. After a mixup in a cloud, where Bugs is switched with the joey, Bugs finds himself in Australia dropped into a kangaroo's pouch.

Bugs at first tries walking away from the kangaroo, but feels guilty after the kangaroo starts crying and agrees to be its 'baby' (a gag used before by McKimson in Gorilla My Dreams). After a wild ride inside the kangaroo's pouch, Bugs tries walking, but is soon felled by a boomerang thrown by an aborigine, whom Bugs later calls "Nature Boy". Bugs tries throwing the boomerang away (commenting, "that thing can give you a conclusion of the brain"), but is hit again and is soon chased by 'Nature Boy'. The aborigine thinks he's stabbing Bugs in a rabbit hole, but Bugs winds up kicking him in the hole instead. An attempt to shoot Bugs with a dart similarly backfires. Eventually, Bugs is chased by 'Nature Boy', first in a canoe, Where Nature Boy sits and rows in the rear, on the Billabong, (A large pond,or lake), through the Tunnel of Love {"Gosh, Nature, I didn't know you cared"}, and then goes up a cliff, where he and 'Nature Boy' fight in the kangaroo's pouch, before the aborigine is kicked out and knocked off the cliff. The joey is then seen floating down and into the kangaroo's pouch.

The kangaroo and her son agree to give Bugs a lift back to the United States, with a speedboat motor attached to the kangaroo's tail. The cartoon ends with Bugs telling the joey to "batten down the hatches!" When the joey replies, "I did batten them down!" Bugs replies, quoting Lou Costello, "Well, batten them down again! We'll teach those hatches!"

Censorship

• When this cartoon aired on Nickelodeon, the part where Nature Boy (the Aboriginie hunter) jabs his spear in a hole while Bugs (standing behind him) dramatizes all kinds of death shrieks was cut to remove Nature Boy jabbing the spear into the hole with evil delight after Bugs moans, "Just go away and leave me to die in peace!" and Bugs, disgusted that Nature Boy would stab him repeatedly while he's "dying", growls "Why you little..." The Nickelodeon version goes from the part where Bugs moans "Just go away and leave me to die in peace" to Bugs kicking Nature Boy in the hole and tickling his feet.
• This cartoon was one of 12 Bugs Bunny cartoons that was scheduled to be on June Bugs' 2001 line-up on Cartoon Network, but was cut at the last minute, presumably because of the Aboriginal hunter.

Availability

"Bushy Hare" was released on the single-disc Looney Tunes Superstars DVD released in April 2010 [1].

External links

• Bushy Hare at the Internet Movie Database