Sign Here, Bunnyfucker
Imagine that… back in 2005, I was working for an advertising firm on Castlereagh St.
Now in those days, two thirds of the media in Australia was controlled by the late Henry Saddler. Saddler had an ex-wife, Jaydha Meagers. Jaydha had a brother, Tyson Meagers. Meagers had a business partner, who had the corner office on our floor. His name was William O’Shea. Bunnyfucker.
Every time anyone had to go see O’Shea, a rabbit would pop out of his office and hop around. It was a menagerie. I didn’t know what he did with them. Maybe he liked rabbit stew, maybe he just loved animals. Who knew. We used to joke about it – “All those rabbits in his office – what is doing with them? Fucking them? LOL… LOLOLOLOLOL.”
Nobody really liked him. He was a grumpy old bastard, all of 34, who sniffed too much, smoked too much and talked too much. Though, he was quite ruggedly handsome. He wore a goatée on his lower lip like a sleazy sax player. His own website proclaimed his eligible bachelor status, and that tout le monde magazine had declared him bachelor of the year in 2004… tout le monde didn’t hold a bachelor of the year competition in 2004… or any other year for that matter.
Rabbits are a symbol of fertility.
There was a bar around the corner from our office, it was called Habbedashery. It had pictures on the walls of girls wearing just their underwear. A bunch of old businessmen would go there. O’Shea would go there. I went there once and notice a graffito in the toilets saying that O’Shea had mastrubated in this stall. Weird. Not really a sexual exploit to brag about. I never went there again.
I remember once there was a young girl who worked at our office. We were holding a little party for someone’s birthday or going away. This girl brought in two baby quails in a cage. You know, like the birds, quails. I guess they were her pets or something. She left them on a desk near the door. They went mysteriously missing. She was quite upset.
A couple of months later, the newspapers burst out like a zit. The story was everywhere. A well to-do executive, financier of a large Sydney company, and long-time associate of the Saddlers, all over the papers. Accused of molesting rabbits. Over a period of months they’d found twenty-two rabbit carcasses, and a guinea pig, apparently thrown out of a high-rise window on Castlereagh St, one of which appeared to be molested sexually. The police had gone to every pet store in Sydney and found out that there had been a lot of purchases of a lot of rabbits, all traced to O’Shea’s credit card. Bunnyfucker.
The papers printed the story for a day or so, then mysteriously stopped following it. How peculiar. Of course, he was linked to Saddler. Associates of Saddler don’t get bad press. Saddler was the press. The only media that reported on the trial was the government-funded youth radio station, Triple X.
When the papers picked up the story again… it wasn’t quite the same.
The papers printed his psychiatrist’s “anal-ysis”. “O’Shea has been self-medicating his psychological trauma with the drug commonly known as ‘ice’, crystal methamphetamine. He has been smoking marijuana every day since he was 14. This, combined with his recent interest in Eastern mysticism, has lead him to delusions where he believes he can speak with rabbits. He believes he can speak to them through his third eye, and it brings him much joy. He believes the rabbits in pet stores are drastically unhappy in pet stores, so buys them to set them free in the wild.”
If I wrote the Hippocratic oath, I would have included an appendix about making a little money on the side too.
Overnight, all of O’Shea’s psycho-ciatrists and spin doctors had turned him from Bunnyfucker, to Bunny-lover, making out to be a caring sensitive new age guy, who just happened to have speed psychosis. All of a sudden, there were no longer twenty-two bunnies and a guinea pig found, but just one rabbit, that had “allegedly” been found, and “allegedly” molested.
O’Shea was sentenced to 12 months in gaol.
Meagers went to see O’Shea one day, while he was still in gaol, before the court’s decision was overturned. Meagers went in with his lawyer. Because O’Shea was still a partner in the company, Meagers still had to run important decisions past him. Meagers stuck the papers he needed signed in O’Shea’s face and said “Sign here, Bunnyfucker.”
