CHAPTER 18-Vol. III: "ROVER RABBIT" ON MARS AND THE TRICKSTER'S "MESSAGE" -- Fanciful February 2004

"Now there was a lifting of lids... The marble eyes rolled wide their their rubber lids. The nostrils winked. The ROBOTS, clothed in hair of ape and WHITE RABBIT arose. Tweedledum following Tweedledee." -- from Ray Bradbury's "THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES" (1950), "The New Illustrated Edition of the Spage-Age Classic" (1979), "APRIL 2005: USHER II" Chapter opening introduction, with illustrations of the White Rabbit and the Tweedles by Ian Miller, followed by a scene with a Mr. WILLIAM Stendahl.

MARTIAN "RABBIT?"

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February 4, 2004 -- This small fuzzy stationary object was photographed recently by the NASA-JPL Opportunity robot rover on the Martian surface in Meridiani Planum. Its shape just happens to resemble that of a rabbit. Which it almost certainly is not, no way, no how (well, as far as we know, since rabbits and large animals cannot live in the thin, rusty Martian atmosphere, and who would deposit a rabbit figurine on Mars.) Do Cheshire Cats exist with only their smile?

Around the world, far outside S.P.A.C.E., others have noted "the Mars rabbit" with curiosity and derision, as you will soon see on a suggested website mentioned in an upcoming account here. We Are Not Alone, as has been said.

The probable explanation is that the rabbit shape is an example of PAREIDOLIA, the human mind seeing recognizable shapes in mundane objects, like in a cloud or a mark on a window. But, given what we will say now, does it really matter?

Considering the rabbit archetype hopping all throughout in the "WOW! Contact" Wonderland, it is merely a footnote here, or a "rabbit's footnote." --- As well as a serendipitous photo taken at the time when our Serendipity Factor has taken centerstage in our Contact (see previous chapter).

In the popular "Little Nemo In Slumberland" Sunday color comic strips from a century ago, there was a dream segment where Little Nemo, the adventurous boy, boarded a zepplin-like airship and it traveled to the Moon. He and his lunar exploration crew made a fearful contact with the Moon's inhabitants -- a race of giant Rabbits. There is also the ancient mythology of the "Hare in the Moon," its shape an artifact of large lunar surface features triggering mental associations with the shape of a hare or rabbit.

Whatever the tiny object on Mars is -- a piece of the rover or a rock, an ancient fozzilized corral or seashell, etc. -- the RABBIT shape, (also called a "flower," "petal" or "crab" by other observers) even though it may be meaningless, is a curious bit of "Wonderland Nonsense!"

And, by happenstance, the Opportunity rover landed on Mars a few days before the anniversary of Lewis Carroll's birthdate, which is January 27.

Below is a photo taken in January by the European Space Agency's Mars Express satelliite orbiting Mars of a large canyon and its surroundings showing interesting blue and green coloration, hinting at past or present water action and possible organic results or traces of that, according to ESA scientists.

MARS 'RABBIT' REDEUX

Here are the reactions from Anders and Gary about the "rabbit"-shaped object photographed by NASA's Oppportunity robot rover on a Martian plain:

By GARY in ENGLAND, February 5, 2004:

WOW, what a picture! Sure it isn't a rabbit, but boy oh! boy, just giving it a quick glance, it sure looks like one at this resolution.

It looks more like a dead tree root which is the only thing I have seen that I can relate this to. Having said this, with what has happened between us, that has been logged on the S.P.A.C.E. site, how could we not see a "coincidence" in the shape of what we see in the picture?

This "thingy," whatever it s, does not look like a "bit of rock." I have never seen any rock found in this sort of shape. Having said that, if the "thingy" has grown like a crystal grows, there is no reason why a shape like this should not be found. Crystals do grow in the funniest of ways given the right conditions. As we do not know what the conditions are where the "thingy" is, we must wait and see. WOW, what if it is a tree root?

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By ANDERS in FINLAND, February 6, 2004:

Yes, to me the MARTIAN structure is definitely the WHITE RABBIT!

That text was dated February the 4th. In the evening of February the 4th, I was out jogging. Guess what I saw? Of course, a funny WHITE HARE!

Well, that is not very unexpected this time of the year and in a wild country like Finland. But seeing it EXACTLY on the SAME day of the date of the text of the "Martian Rabbit" report (seen later) makes this more than a simple coincidence.

vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv

DOING THE BUNNY HOP ON MARS

Friday, February 6, 2004:

A new image from NASA's JPL series of Martian rover photos shows what SEEMS to resemble an Easter egg, (not shown here). Actually, the markings are NOT an anomaly but are simply the impressions of the rover's airbags as they bounced along the flat Martian surface, photographed from a lander's camera.

To read into this an "Easter Egg" would be a prime example of PAREIDOLIA, human brain processes making knowable associations, -- like the cloud that becomes a "dragon," or the piece of rover equipment (perhaps?) that looks like a rabbit. Nethertheless, the BUNNY IMAGE, whatever it really is, is provocative in the context of the WOW! Contact and its patterns, along with the PLACING (the Red Planet Mars) and the TIMING (during the SERENDIPITY cluster) of the "ROVER RABBIT" on MARS photos.

As with the MEANINGFUL COINCIDENCES, the SYNCHRONICITY PATTERN of the WOW! CONTACT, now 3 and 1/2 years running, which strongly suggests a communication and messages of an otherworldly nature, the WHITE RABBIT IMAGE from MARS may convey a SUBTLE "WOW!" MESSAGE to humanity at large, through a SERENDIPITOUS DISCOVERY.

Because of the INFERENTIAL aspect of SERENDIPITY, that is the stuff of SCIENCE, as Robert Merton discusses in his book published in January, the month the rovers landed on Mars.

With these far-out thoughts (literally!), we DECODE a WOW! CONTACT MESSAGE which has come about through SERENDIPITY, even though rabbits do not hop around on Mars and roll Easter eggs! The TRICKSTER, giving us FOOLISH associations as an early "APRIL FOOL's JOKE," is alive not only on Earth, but now on Mars, too.

And, like the Three Princes of Serendip on their travels of adventurous discoveries, Three Landers of Earth, the silent British-ESA Beagle Two probe and the two NASA-JPL rovers, arrived at MARS, as if to inadvertantly celebrate the release of Merton's landmark SERENDIPITY book!

The further significance of the MARS IMAGES, is that since the "WOW! SIGNAL" was first detected through Subjective and Objective HUMAN EXPERIENCE on June 12, 2000, is that the world's IMAGINATION has been ignited by this remarkable exploration of Mars by these sophisticated robotic rovers from Earth and bringing "that rascally RABBIT" into the POPULAR IMAGINATION WORLDWIDE in connection with ALF: Alien Life Forms.

All along we here have wondered why there have not been, for instance, many reports by astronomers of unusual mass sighthings of rabbits and hares near radio telescopes, or a sudden interest among astronomers in Alice In Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. As far as we know, that has not been the case, as it would have been a confirming element.

Now, unexpectedly, the PRIME TRICKSTER ARCHETYPE IMAGE (the WHITE RABBIT) in our Repeatable Pattern Recognition of the "WOW! CONTACT" has surfaced on the RED PLANET MARS, at PLAY(Boy!)

Even though it is likely an artifact of the rover's equipment, if you visit the first websites below, primarily "MARTIAN CRAB EXPLANATIONS," there is an excellent WORLDWIDE sampling of quotes from all sorts of people who see a "RABBIT" on MARS, whom we can call ROVER RABBIT, rather than, say, Roger. There is a REASON for this NONSENSE, as we soon shall see! Also, hop into the other websites here for your intellectual PLEASURE and KNOWLEDGE.

This is one small step for humankind, one giant hop for the WOW! Contact......

The last link in the above list -- "THE SYMBOLISM OF RABBITS" -- serves as an important reminder of what has been related elsewhere throughout this e-book on the various meanings of RABBIT SYMBOLOGY, a persistently recurrent and repeating "signal" in our Contact, now reaching serendipitously to MARS, no matter how silly it may seem, even on the (Martian) surface.

LITTLE NEMO'S RABBITS AND EASTER EGGS

The artistic color Sunday comic strip by Winsor McCay, "Little Nemo In Slumberland" in the 1900's and 1910's, and as Little Nemo "In The Land of Wonderful Dreams" in the 1920's, featured two cartoon stories related to our "DECODING the MESSAGE" here, making meaning out of nonsense, the ALCHEMY of CREATION.

In the March 20, 1910 edition of the New York Herald, the dreaming Nemo and a crew aboard a "mothership-sized" Zepplin landed on the MOON, where they made a frightful FIRST CONTACT with giant WHITE RABBITS in a forest of giant Easter Lillies.

In another strip with "a sequence deep in symbolism, Nemo enters the urban slum of Shantytown, is regarded as a savior as he transforms tenements into palaces, performs Spring rites with Easter eggs and rabbits, and raises a poor girl to life on Easter morning," writes Rick Marschall in "30 Postcards: Little Nemo in Slumberland," published in 1996 by Stewart, Tabori & Chang.

MARSchall (we had to note that "MARS" association in his surmane!) then writes of the sequence: "It is the only major sequence in McCay's 500-plus pages where Nemo consistently plays an active, rather than a passive, role in his dreams." In other words, Little Nemo has a LUCID DREAM in which his waking consciousness interacts knowingly and by choice within the "holographic virtual reality" of a dream.

In the dream sequence, Nemo is dressed in a cape and holds a magic wand as he stands among Easter eggs of all sizes, telling some kids in a car that he will make some WISHES, an element GARY in England first brought-up in a Chocolate Cadbury Easter Egg SYNC in February 2001.

As Nemo makes his wish, saying, "Jump out of your shells and vanish! It is my wish!" child-sized brown cottontail rabbits break out of their Easter egg shells and hop away, disappearing.

"Little Nemo in Slumberland" was a CARTOON artistic triumph (see ANDERS' earlier references to his CARTOON DREAMS). It was the only comic strip to be put on exhibit at the prestigious Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Artist McCay was a friend of famed artist Maxwell Parrish, who died in the 1960's well into his 90s.

As a "rabbit-foot's-note" here: As we noted earlier in this e-book, in the 1952 science fiction movie "Red Planet Mars" in which a California astronomer (played by Peter Graves) apparently makes telegraphic-radio contact with inhabitants on Mars, there is a sequence at the start of the film in which his wife runs to their youngest boy's bedroom, hearing him cry.

He tells his mother that he lost his RABBIT. His mother finds the large plush, fluffy WHITE RABBIT toy, and the boy, in his pajamas like Little Nemo, is happy. Thus, we have a RABBIT connection associated with FIRST CONTACT and MARS, in a 1952 version of Carl Sagan's "CONTACT" (whose book has RABBITS guiding SETI astronomer Arroway to the Very Large Array radio telescopes).

As a reminder, RABBITS and ALICE in WONDERLAND as in the Cheshire Cat, are mentioned in Barney Hill's hypnotic recall by Dr. Benjamin Simon in the famous early UFO abduction account of September 1961, and a Bushel of RABBITS are shown in the TV movie "Roswell" from the 1990's in a sequence from in 1947. And it goes on and on, these references, taking us, like Alice, on Adventures in Wonderland....

AN "ALICE IN MARS-LAND" CHRONICLE

************************** "IF WE CALL THEM, THEY WILL ANSWER." --- Anders von Bergen.

By H. W. Spegeln, Feb. 5, 2004 On a golden afternoon in 1908, Alice was browsing through books at The Serendipity Shop at Number 118 Westbourne Grove in London when she stumbled upon a book called, "MARS As The Abode Of Life" by astronomer Percival Lowell. At which moment she heard the words, "Beam her up, Scotty," as the shop shimmered away around her. "Curiousier and curiouser," said Alice as she found herself on Mars, transported in holographic form like a ghostly spirit to protect her from the unbreathable air, as the opportunity arose for the trip. Her vision blurly at first, she was staring at a White Rabbit toy on the martian ground, which muttered, she thought, in a digitalized voice, "Follow me. Follow me. Follow..." "But, why, you're not a rabbit! It's absurd," Alice then insisted as she rubbed her eyes, seeing that whatever it was, still it just looked like a White Rabbit but was not one. "It's all nonsense, I say! All this ambiguity and uncertainity and guesswork and illusions," she whispered to herself. "But why this image now?" In a flash, Alice found herself, in the flesh, at the "Trip To Mars" attraction at Coney Island, circa 1908, between Dreamland and Luna Park. A trolley clangs by, and a young man on it waves to Alice, saying, "Hello! I am Anders from Finland, but I am lost in Wonderland, with a message: Dreams are wormholes to other worlds!" Then, out of a thick blue mist, sociologist Robert Merton aka Bobby Merlin, appeared as a 14-year-old boy, in a train conductor's uniform, waving his magic wand. "All aboard, Alice!" he announced, inviting her to board his child-sized Mars Express train, driven by engineer Mister I. Magination aka Paul Tripp. Behind her on the train, as it tooted into a tunnel and then along inside the "Tripp to Mars" show, sat a man wearing a name tag reading, "M.Y. Word, Science Journalist." "What is the world, M.Y. Word?" Alice, on a whim, asked him. "We really have nothing to tell you, bright child," the science reporter replied, quoting, he said, from physicist Dr. Leo Smolin. "Who's he and of what meaning does he have here?" Alice asked. To which the journalist explained, "He sought a unified field theory. Lost in the Wonderland, you, child Alice, found it by serendipity, as in that shop you came from." Then M.Y. Word ruffled a newspaper called "Science Times" with a dragonfly drawing on its cover and the date, February 3, 2004 -- nearly a hundred years in the future from the time she was in at Coney Island. "Not knowing is part of the fun, and I submit to you, sweet Alice, that it is our fate not to know," M.Y. Word said mysteriously, as a huge dark moth whispering "I am Indrid Cold" flew around him. "Such AMBIGUITY is the source of the richness of drama, art, life, perhaps even science." He paused as Alice listened, her "M.J. the Moonwalker" brand gloved hands holding up her chin. Then a little, tussle-haired boy in L.N. initialed pajamas, wearing a cape and a red crown with a Valentines heart image emblazoned on it, slipped onto the train. "Crown and heart united," the boy sighed, as if nobody cared what he said. "We are doomed -- or privleged, Alice," M.Y. Word said, tapping away with a white featherd pen, "to find our meaning in questions, facing as cleared-eyed as the Hubble telescope the prospect that answers will probably never be forthcoming." At the mere mention of Hubble Telescope, Alice, growing larger, floated above her seat on the train and flew up in the air above the chugging train, flying in sync with it. She was dressed in a white spacesuit with a nitrogen-propelled Captain Candless backpack. Zipping by above her was a "Jefferson Starship" with a White Rabbit insignia on it, with Peter Pan flying along side the starship, saying, "Second star to the right!" "Hubba, hubba, Hubble!" Alice exclaimed. "I feel like the biggest telescope that ever was. Oh, I said that before back in the 1860's on my first adventures in Wonderland." "My word, oh excuse me, Mister M.Y. Word," she continued, looking down on the train, and shouting: "I do recall now collaborating with Malcolm Longair, the Astronomer Royal of Scotland, on a book called 'Alice And The Space Telescope,' with a foreword by Riccardo Giacconi, then, well that's in the future from here, the Space Telescope Science Institute director," she said. Alice shrunk and was back on the train.The boy on the train tapped her on the shoulder with a backscratcher. Itching his head, he said, "Oh, Alice, I read the book you were in, 'Alice in Quantumland' by a Bristol physicist while I had a dream about the CERN Lab in Switzerland. Oh, sorry, my name is Little Nemo. I must have been dreaming, as usual!" "Oh, yes, what wonderfully smart professors, Longair of the Space Telescope book and Gilmore of the Quantumland book, and what fun I had with them, helping to explain science to General Public," Alice said. "But are you explaining the WOW! Contact in such a sensible way?" asked Little Nemo, scratching his nose as a strange metal object fell out of it with a drop of blood. "Oh, what a bloody thingy!" he exclaimed. "No, Little Nemo, I try to explain the unexplainable, but it comes out as nonsense," Alice replied to the boy's inquiry. The boy then told of his Slumberland dream tale of his spaceflight on a giant airship to the Moon, floating through a huge forest of Easter lilies, where the Zepplin landed. "When we set foot on the Moon, I said to Airship Captain Flip, 'Now! What will we do, take a little stroll? Will we get lost?' Then from the Lily flower stalks we saw giant rabbit heads peaking at us from behind them, and I said, 'Oh, what's that? Are they rabbits?' When we saw the giant rabbits hopping towards us, we fled in fright. And then, Alice, I woke up." Suddenly Little Nemo, flinching, grabbed onto Alice, as the Mars Express train screeched to a quick halt. "It may all be in the Imagin' Nation, Alice. Which isn't all that bad," said engineer Mister I. Magination, giving her a wink and a last toot-toot. Moonwalking over to her was M.J., grabbing her hand gently, as the sounds of the record album in which he once narrated the story of the "E.T." movie played. Softly, with kindness, he said to Alice, "Wow, maybe all our contacts in Wonderland are happening in a Never-Neverland afterall." "Or maybe not," answered Alice, wiping some martian red dust off her dress and shoes. "At last. Physical evidence," said M.Y. Word to the Cheshire Schrodinger Rabbit, who muttered back, depending on its state of mind at any moment, "Yes, I agree. Well, no, I disagree. Then again..." it repeated over and over and over. In an instant, without warning, Alice was back on Mars in February 2004. Robot Rovers Opportunity and Spirit, wearing tee-shirts with images of Ray Bradbury and Arthur C. Clarke, were dancing in unison, singing: "We are Tweedledee and Tweedledum." ************************** [CREDIT NOTES: Quotes by the fictional "M.Y. Word," with slight alterations, are taken from science journalist and author Dennis Overbye from his essay in The New York Times, dated February 3, 2004, titled, "Adventure or Inquiry? Two Visions of Cosmic Destiny?" on page F3. copyright@The New York Times Corp. Also, "Alice and the Space Telescope" (subtitled "The world's most exraordinary 'looking glass,' explained by a pre-eminent astronomer") was published in 1989 by John Hopkins University Press, using the drawings of Sir John Tenniel from Lewis Carroll's "Wonderland" books. "Alice in Quantumland: An Allegory of Quantum Physics" by Robert Gilmore, Physics Lecturer at Bristol (U.K.) University, was published in 1995 by Springer-Verlag in NYC. "The Martian Chronicles" by Ray Bradbury, "The New Illustrated Edition Of the Space-Age Classic" published 1979 by Bantam Science Fiction. And, the quotes from Little Nemo about his Moonwalk are from the "Little Nemo in Slumberland" comic strip, as drawn by fantasy artist Winsor McCay, from the March 20, 1910 edition of "The New York Herald" newspaper, as re-produced in "The Complete Little Nemo in Slumberland" Volume IV: 1910-1911 by Richard Marschall, Fantagraphics Books, 1990.] P.S. The name "SPEGELN," as in the author of this short story's pen-surname, is Swedish for "LOOKING GLASS." There's been a movie theater in Stockholm with that name since 1935.-- noted by Harold Egeln and Anders von Bergen. VVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVV

A RABBIT DREAM

By Harold Egeln

Wednesday, February 11, 2004 -- This morning I had a dream about reading an article in the "NYT," which I took to be The New York Times (in Finland NYT means "Now').

There was a line or two about a RABBIT, SPACE and MARS, not surprising gven what has been happening. In the dream I thought: The New YorkTimes has an article on "the Martian Rabbit," but that can't be, because they would ignore such trte speculation. But, as I read the words, they changed to images, rising in three-dimensional form off the page, like a ring or a charm bracelet, silvery in color.

The rabbit was the largest item on this, with other images which I was unable to define. I thought of Zales, a jewlery store chain here in the city. Enthralled in fascination by how the words became 3-D images which the words tried to link together, I awoke.

NEW YORK TIMES FEATURES "MARTIAN RABBIT"

In The New York Times of Sunday, February 15, 2004 "Week in Review" section, there is a front page picture, on the bottom, of a WHITE RABBIT (very much like the one here) wearing an alien eye mask with this teaser headline: "SEEING RED RABBITS - There's a bunny on Mars, at least in the eyes of some beholders." By Tom Zeller. -- page 12.

The article on page 12 by Zeller in the NYT is headlined: "MARTIAN BUNNIES?" (with illustrations).

It begins with a reference and photo of a Times feature page from 1911 headlines: "Martian Build Two Immense Canals In Two Years," canals which were mistranslated from the Italian word for channels. Thinking there were artifical canals on Mars, it "gave rise to much specualtion about the industrious nature of Martians...Rabbit engineers were not mentioned," said a caption with the "Martian Bunnies" story.

Then Zeller goes into the the latest speculation among "armchair explorers" on the Internet noting that a strange white artifact, probably from the robot rover Opportunity may be, well he says: "Enter the bunny." This sets the humorous tone of the article, typical of the major media when it does not consider the wider scope of an event, even if the event has a humorous "trickster" element, as this certainly does... which, while being negated (the Trickster validates and negates), still presents profound questions.

Zeller then refers to the "Martian Crabs" website mentioned earlier in this chapter, and talks about the "rabbit image," noting that some people see "a rabbit, a plant, a bit of corral, a dirty sock." Zeller quotes Joy Crsp, a Mars project scientis, that the object is connected with the rover.

"No further investigation of the bunny is planned," Zeller writes, then noting that the Opportunity rover has moved on and that "the rabbit may have been run over."

"What IS This Thing?" is the title for photo section accompanying the article, one of the artifac and the other a made-up one of a white rabbit, along with Playboy bunny, crab and assorted images.

So, Egeln's dream about the Times comes true! The article, although it has a humorous setting, shows that the esteemed Times could not ignore an artifact, whatever its nature, that has attracted so much worldwide attention and made countless imagine or actually see:

A WHITE RABBIT ON MARS

As we have said here, this is still significant, however silly it may seem, because it is THE FIRST TIME our SERENDIPITOUS "WOW!" CONTACT"s primary recurrent image, A RABBIT, has been connected with thoughts of LIFE on an ALIEN WORLD -- Mars. Not knowingly, of course, since it is an INDIRECT ASSOCIATION which the entire spectrum of a speculators are not aware of.

We did get one phone call about the Times article from someone within the S.P.A.C.E. orbit today, and responses from Gary and Anders.

It presents an OPPORTUNITY, as is the name of the NASA/JPL rover, for creating awareness of the extensive continuing Contact and Communication, which is a discovery arrived by SEREDIPITY, as a SETI scientist would label it, -- if the scientist knew how to 1) recognize a Message, and 2) decode the Message.

We're doing the "Bunny Hop" dance on this one, enjoying it while realizing its importance.

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MARS RABBITS MULTIPLY LIKE BUNNIES!

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By Harold Egeln

New York City, February 18, 2004 -- The "Martian Bunny," whom we've nicknamed "Rover Rabbit," continues to generate reams of speculation as to its nature -- and, again, no one seems to know for sure -- which is the ambiguous nature of the whole close encounter phenomenon!

Doing some searching on the Internet, we've uncovered a sampling of information about MARS and RABBIT connections, most far pre-dating the current IMAGE from the Red Planet. Although it makes sense that such associations have been made before, it becomes more intriguing now.

Below are some of these websites, with the following information:

** A children's book called "RABBITS ON MARS" by Jan Wahl tells a story of astro-rabbits aboard a rocket landing on Mars.

** The Looney Tunes stories of Marvin Martian and the Earthling BUGS BUNNY, first portrayed in a Chuck Jones cartoon released on October 19, 1963 titled "Mad As A MARS HARE," with the story by John Dunn. "Duck Dodgers" came later.

** The video movie review in the "RABBIT Creek Journal" - a weekly newspaper in the foothills of northern California - about the 1995 Brian DePalma film, "Mission To MARS," which the paper rated 3 Rabbits in its review of January 4, 2003.

** A modern-day Japanese cine anime TV series called "Sailor MARS" (a follow-up to the TV "Sailor Moon" series), which has two feature characters, Sailor Mars (Reye Hino) and her friend "BUNNY."

** With the rover Spirit's landing on Mars in early January, The Toronto Star newspaper ran an article headlined "MARS, Myth, Magic & Bugs BUNNY" by AP reporter Connie Cass, on January 15, 2004, noting movies and books with Mars themes, and Marvin Martian and Bugs Bunny cartoons.

** A syndicated column by Martin Sloane (a name used in a touching old "Twilight Zone" episode!) that appeared in the "South Coast Today" newspaper in 1995 is headlined: "Voters Praise Energizer BUNNY, M&M/MARS." A free Energizer Bunny promotion earned The Golden Shopping Cart Award for Best Promotion of 1995 and M&M/Mars candies won The Award for Best Customer Relations.

** An account of a hike up "RABBIT's Peak #2" in a "100 Peaks Sierra Club" publicaion from December 26, 2001, was co-written by MARS Bonfire (what a great name!). The peak, on wihich MARS and companions hiked, was also called the "BIG BUNNY."

** And there are a few other sites below, including a game, with Mars Rabbit connections. We even found one (not included here) called "Does MARS Hill have a BUNNY Slope?"

These are not necessarily synchronicities. Syncs, which seem to come out of thin air, have an enormous personal emotional impact on the experiencer(s), followed by a deeply powerful intellectual realization and/or "Eureka!" insight with much meaning that is in context to other such occurances. And the time and place of the sync is often a factor.

However, given the "MARTIAN ROVER RABBIT," this information below gains more significance, even though it all may be just interesting curiosities and lots of silly fun.

Today, in a New York Times article from Paris, Texas ("A Texan's Accent for French Fables" by Alex Riding, page E1), the story concerns the staging and production by Texan Robert Wilson of 17th Century fabulist Jean de la Fontaine's "Les Fables," featuring humanized animal characters.

Wilson is asked what is his favorite animal fable in the article's last paragraph:

"And Mr. Wilson's favorite? 'I usually like the scene I'm watching,' he said with a smile. 'If the rabbit is onstage, I like the rabbit the best."

Over a month before the "WOW! Signal Contact" burst forth on June 12, 2000, I was at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden during the Japanese Cherry Blossom Festival. (This is mentioned in Chapter One of this e-book.) A man there, seeing that I had a camera dangling on a strap from my wrist, wanted me to take his picture in front of the sundail, an old way of measuring time.

As I took the photo, I noticed a RABBIT hopping quickly pass the sundial, and as it quickly dived under a hedge, I snapped a photo of it. Later, post-June 12, 2000, I realized the WHITE RABBIT with the POCKET WATCH "ALICE IN WONDERLAND" connection here, although it involved another TIME device, a sundial. It was like a real-life re-enactment of the early scene in "Wonderland," since rabbits usually never wear waistcoats and carry a pocketwatch, muttering "I'm late for a very important date!"

Adding to the significance later, I learned that the man whom I photographed wanted to be called "BUNNY" as a child, but his parents refused. In the decades just before his childhood it was still a popular name for boys ("Wizard of Oz" author Frank Baum's firstborn son was named "Bunny"). And about a dozen years ago some children, upon seeing the man I photographed, called him "Uncle MARS," a compliment. So the MARS-BUNNY connection was with us in the earliest stages of this Contact, but it was not realized until now.

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ADDITIONAL NOTES, Monday, March 8, 2004:
And now, in March, we discovered RABBITS at the WOODSTOCK Music Festival of August 1969 in a photo taken by Egeln!!! (-- See next chapter.)

Also, we added today, as the last link below, a news article (re; Rense.com) from the influential "Philadelphia Inquirer" newspaper from March 8, 2004 headlined "NASA Snow Job?" featuring the debate on the image of a "LITTLE WHITE BUNNY" and other anomolies, like E and G (as in Egeln and Gary? (well, perhaps not.)

QUESTION: After getting images of WHITE RABBITS ala Alice In Wonderland in droves among several people in many ways across stretches of time since APRIL 2000 in connection with a Contact/Communication with an Unknown Hyper-Intelligence System, -- why has no one in the UFO or astrophysics fields (with a couple of outstanding exceptions in the field of psychology -- Dr. Gibbs Williams and Dr. Remo Roth) paid any attention to this Overwhelming Information and seen, in its connection with our plethera of detailed, cautious accounts, its WIDE PUBLIC MANIFESTATION ON MARS NOW???)

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MARS "BUNNY" LANDER DEBRIS, NASA SAYS

By Harold Egeln

"Sitting on a hilltop, I saw a cloud come into my view. It became a dragon! Then, poof! It was gone. But my imagination came alive... And so did I." said the child, a quantum cloud itself. -- from "The Lonesome Planetary Dweller," an written children's book.

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Thursday, March 4, 2004 -- It's official. The Mars Rover Rabbit is but a "dust bunny," a mere piece of flotsome or airbag debris from the Opportunity robotic lander, the most likely explanation offered by NASA and JPL scientists today.

Although it was unlikely to the extreme that Rover Rabbit was an actual bunny figurine (as far as we know), the tiny two inch object that mimicked the shape of a rabbit captured people's imagination.

It, thus, gave a reference, via worldwide publicity, to the central Wonderland White Rabbit of our WOW! Signal Contact on another planet. However, that critical association and meaning is unbekownst to folks following The Bunny Trail on Mars, lost in S.P.A.C.E.'s largely obscure websites. Rover Rabbit, albeit robot debris, remains a Symbol, and therein lies its significance!

Parts of today's NASA/JPL press release reads (all BOLD emphasis ours):

"Like a RABBIT in a HAT, the identity of an oddity that looks like 'BUNNY ears' is a picture from Mars that has eluded science and engineering teams. The public, also fascinated with the mysterious object, has asked in a slew of e-mails, 'What its it?'"

"It is a yellowish object measuring about four to six centmeters (about two inches) long that made its debut when Opportunity eyes welcomed Earth to a new neighborhood on Mars in her mission success panaoramic image... Still, it wasn't the conspicious bedrock outcropping near the horizon (of Meridiani Planum) that initially fascinated many people. It was the 'BUNNY ears'."

The article tells has Jeff Johnson of the U.S. Geological Survey and NASA/JPL colleagues investigated the bunny, which bemused Johnson when he noticed the tiny oddity, wondering what it could be.

"....Most team members agreed that the 'BUNNY ears' had been, at some point, a part of the rover or its lander, a piece of airbag material."

Steve Squyres, the mission's principal investigator, asked Johnson (that name makes a for a synchronicity later--Egeln) to "track the BUNNY." Johnson, in a photo analysis, found that it was blown by a breeze from its spot 15 feet from the lander and under a lander ramp, leaving no footprints, being very lightweight.

The possible identity of the "white rabbit," NASA said, are "cotton insulation, Vectran covers and wraps from the airbag, Zylon bridle tensioning ties, or felt insulation from the gas generation," but almost certainly not a bunny figurine, although no one can positively identify it.

The name Johnson comes up again in our next chapter following ("Winter Wonderkand"), not the geologist Johnson just mentioned here, but the late Pop Artist Ray Johnson, subject of a 2002 film documentary called "How To Draw A BUNNY."

For the full story direct from NASA, with photos and of "the BUNNY" in an animated photo, read the link below:

THE INSISTENT, PERSISTENT "WHITE RABBIT"

By Harold Egeln

Wednesday, March 11, 2004 -- Okay, there appears to be no "Wihite Rabbit" hopping around on Mars. That's nonsense, like the Wonderland in which a talking WHITE RABBIT with a pocketwatch leads Alice into the nonsensicle Wonderland in the enchanting mid-19th Century story.

While Wonderland's White Rabbit was, like the "Rover Rabbit," not real as we knew from its first moment of discovery, but a product of the creative imagination and genius of the playful Lewis Carroll, a mathematician by profession, its symbolic meaning is its value, and our clue RIGHT NOW to a MAJOR MESSAGE transmitted through a most unusual "WOW! Signal," not easily comprehended unless examined by deeply civilized minds.

Rabbits and Hares have mythical significance in many cultures around the Earth back to ancient, as we have exhaustively documented in this lengthy e-book, -- and in the case of a disturbed country woman in the 1940s studied by a famed British psychologist, were the cause of a healing breakthrough, thanks to a dream analysis, as documented in the classic book "The Lady of the Hare" in the early 1940s. (And she was a woman who saw "orbs" prior to a relative's death!)

What we have documented in this chapter is but another absurd part of the complex and interlocking fabric of a major Message that has now appeared on Mars. Like the lander or airbag debris ("Rover Rabbit") which is a small part of a marvelous space mission, our "WOW!" Rabbit is part of the larger Close Encounter matrix, of which S.P.A.C.E. is serving as a UFO DETECTIVE AGENCY in pursuing answers to that enigma which enthralls as well as repels humans.

While most other anomalies at the Mars landers sites may just be the result of over-stretching imaginations in a sincere, understandable search for meaning, the WHITE RABBIT IMAGE touches something deep within the human psyche, humanity's "inner spaces" where the "inner reach of outer space," as the late and incredibly thoughtful Joseph Campbell (of "The Power of Myth" fame) said, stirs.

We, as close encounter sleuths in S.P.A.C.E., remain hot on THE BUNNY TRAIL....

"There are creatures out there that are far beyond even the definitions of God or Gods held by your science or theology." -- from a story by ANDERS VON BERGEN.

NOTE: If you are visiting this webpage from the "PROJECT WONDERLAND" E-Book by S.P.A.C.E. (the Search Project for Aspects of Close Encounters) for the first time, click-on "previous page" below for background material ("Contact By Serendipity") on this chapter. Also, visit the three E-Book Volumes listed below.

THE ADVENTURES OF "PROJECT WONDERLAND" TO BE CONTINUED.... This chapter must be understood in context of all the over-abundance of information related in the entire E-Book, and in the decoding process of the "WOW! Contact."