It’s hare today, gone tomorrow — thanks to a face full of freaky tentacles.
The grotesque “Frankenstein”-esque rabbits — once just a Colorado curiosity — are now turning up in Minnesota and Nebraska, their furry faces sprouting grotesque horn- and tentacle-like growths straight out of a B-movie.
The unsettling deformities are the calling card of cottontail papilloma virus (CRPV), also known as Shope papilloma virus — a bug that turns harmless bunnies into nightmare fuel.
The DNA-twisting illness is spread when mosquitoes, ticks, or fleas bite an infected rabbit and then pass it along to others.
While the virus doesn’t affect humans or pets like dogs and cats, wildlife officials are warning: look, don’t touch.
First, the infection appears as small, red bumps. Then, as the virus works its dark magic, the spots erupt into wart-like tumors — which can harden into keratinized papillomas, the bizarre “horns” and “tentacles” now haunting Midwestern lawns.
In some cases, those warts morph into deadly skin cancer.
And this summer could be prime bunny-horror season: mosquito and tick numbers soar in the warm months, giving CRPV plenty of winged and crawling couriers to spread it across the heartland.
Locals in Fort Collins, Colorado, have been spotting the deformed rabbits for weeks. Resident Susan Mansfield told 9News she saw one with what looked like “black quills or black toothpicks sticking out all around his or her mouth.”
“I thought he would die off during the winter, but he didn’t,” she said. “He came back a second year, and it grew.”
On Reddit, one Minnesotan recently reported seeing the phenomenon “for the last few years in Minnesota,” adding that the rabbits around them “died off who had it.”
Another chimed in: “They’re all over here in St. Paul. When I google them, it’s hundreds of MN based photos.”
Meanwhile in Nebraska, one shocked resident posted a video of a bunny with the same creepy, fleshy appendages sprouting from its head and dangling beneath its mouth.
CRPV isn’t new — scientists have known about it for decades. In 2013, a Minnesota man’s video of a tendril-ridden rabbit went viral, with viewers comparing it to the fabled Jackalope.
While the virus is harmless to people, it can be deadly for the rabbits — sometimes growing so large that the twisted protrusions block their mouths, causing starvation, as per The Daily Mail.
And in domestic bunnies, the growths can lead to squamous cell carcinoma, a potentially fatal skin cancer.
With no cure, experts warn to keep pets away, resist the urge to “help,” and unfortunately let nature — however nightmarish — run its course.
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