Plunging pick-up sales

[Jan]

That seems like a very good use for a roundabout.  I'd like to try that here.  I bet traffic would slow down!

[Lotus Freak]

Jan, here's a piccy of one of the roundabouts in the town I work in:



the towns people really put a lot of care into their roundabouts. The one in our little town is sponsored and looked after by the garden society. They also maintain the baskets found at traffic lights and the main street. Hard to believe it's all volunteer work.

[Jan]

It's very pretty.  Did you snap that picture while you were going 'round? 

The roundabouts here are cared for by the lovely City of Carmel.  Everything here is of the city, by the city, and for the city.   

[Lotus Freak]

oh nooooo, Cherri doesn't snap pics while driving, Cherri is a dangerous enough driver without having to fiddle with a camera I found it on the net. I was trying to look for a piccy of the roundabout in our town and I found that one. Ours isn't too bad looking.

[Jan]

Well, it's really pretty.  I think driving around flower beds on my way to and from work is a very nice thing, even if I do get only a blurry glance as I speed by.  I'm glad the city adopted that particular idea from y'all British. 

[Howard]

There's a roundabout near here, where the London-Brighton road crosses the road going east-west, which is inhabited by a large colony of rabbits!  The roundabout is a large and busy one, and well covered by shrubs and small trees, so the bunnies live in comparative safety!

[Jan]

Now, there's a Darwinian opportunity.  The not-so-smart rabbits get, um, squashed; the smart rabbits survive.  Could we assume that the rabbits still on that roundabout are very smart, relatively speaking? 

[steveg]

You could be right Jan - it also has an element of safety for the rabbits - for certain periods of the day, their predators cannot get at them due to the level of traffic - yet the rabbits themselves can forage far afield if they so wish during the night when the traffic is light or even non existent.

Steve

[Jan]

Oh, dear.  I wonder if they will fall prey to over-population.  Are they listless and depressed?  Do they sometimes not feel the urge to engage in reproductive activities?   Or maybe they have an unexplained desire to push others who are not paying attention into the speeding traffic?

[Howard]

Are they listless and depressed?

Good heavens no, dear Jan -- or at least I doubt it.  You've got to realize that these rodents are part of Brighton, a supercharged city by the sea, often called 'London-by-the-Sea', a city which rarely if ever sleeps.  It is a city well known for its pubbing and clubbing, for its tolerance of unconventional behaviour, for non-conforming.  Has been like that since the days of the Prince Regent.  If any of its inhabitants ever go to bed, then (let's say), it is possible that a significant proportion of them do so not for sleep and recuperation, but for recreational purposes (is that a polite way of describing it?  )

Do they sometimes not feel the urge to engage in reproductive activities?

I think I might have answered your question with my sentence above,  though perhaps 'reproductive activities' is not the mot juste, in so far as Brighton has a thriving gay and lesbian community (the largest in Britain, some say), and reproduction is not a major thing in such communities.  If the bunnies under our consideration conform to the general demographics of their native city, then it is possible that they reproduce less than the norm for their class.