Brer Rabbit Hops Home

As many of you know, we’ve been working on a Southern Literary Trail app for a while now. Due out on iTunes this fall, it includes literary sites across the South, from writer’s homes to museums, gravesites, restaurants and bars and statues. So, a tweet on Sunday night that said “Br’er Rabbit statue stolen in Eatonton” caught our attention.

Brer Rabbit is a character created by writer Joel Chandler Harris, who was born in Eatonton, Georgia, and has several sites there dedicated to him (as well as a house museum in Atlanta). One of those is the Uncle Remus Museum, named after the fictional narrator of Harris’s stories. A site on our app, the museum is constructed of three Putnam County slave cabins and features a statue of the rabbit out front, with mementos, first editions of Harris’s works and photos from Disney’s movie version of Harris’s stories, “Song of the South,” on view inside.

The 3-foot-tall, 250-pound statue of Brer Rabbit was reported stolen on Aug. 7. On Monday, the rabbit was found in the woods about 5 miles east of town. His pipe and left ear had been broken off, but otherwise he was in pretty good shape. The sheriff’s office believes the taking of the statue by four young boys was a prank that went wrong. Sounds like a heavy prank to us. Anyway, we’re glad Brer Rabbit is back home in Eatonton, and the museum says it plans to repair the statue and get him back to his perch out front as soon as possible.

The cement pedestal Brer Rabbit usually stands on fittingly reads:

Brer Rabbit
Born And Bred In The Briarpatch
He Survives Forever By His Wit His Courage And His Cunning

Image courtesy of Eatonton-Putnam Chamber of Commerce.