#0152 "Peter Cotton Trail"

My son and I were out for a walk in the very cold winter of 1985-86. We were in the pine forest on the northeast corner of the intersection of Highway #9 and the road to Tottenham. My son was intrigued by the bunny tracks so I decided to record them for prosperity. Without the painting I would have not remembered that most pleasant stroll through the forest.

The title is a small pun on a name temporarily assumed by a fictional rabbit named Peter Rabbit in the works of Thornton Burgess, an author from Springfield, Massachusetts. Thornton wrote this series starting in 1910. Thornton had begun making up bedtime stories with named animals for his 4 year old son. His son was already familiar with Beatrix Potter's Peter Rabbit and insisted that his father use the same name for the rabbit in those stories. The laws governing usage of published character names were less strict back then. Other writers also used the name Peter Rabbit. Gene Autry recorded the holiday song in 1950, "Here Comes Peter Cottontail" which became popular and gave the Easter Bunny a name - the same name.

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