The story of the atropine rabbit

Why this post?

My wife Alice goes on Facebook on her iPad.  She just noted that our long time friends Helen and Ronald Hall just celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary. We got married the same year. She congratulated them with a post and mentioned the atropine rabbit.

This is the story.

This happened the second year that I was in medical school and we were studying pharmacology.

We had moved from our apartment on University Avenue to 419 Beta Street in Stadium Village, the married student housing at the University of Utah. We had some friends who were with us in Bishop Oscar McConkie’s ward when we live in Mrs. Cora Balliff’s basement at 240 University Street.

They were Helen and Ronald Hall. They also wanted to move to Stadium Village. We invited them to come and look at our apartment. 

One day I was in the laboratory in pharmacology. We were doing an experiment to demonstrate the effects of atropine. We were using a rabbit as the experimental animal. We anesthetized the rabbit with ether and performed the experiment and got the desired results. Then we had to decide what to do with the rabbit. It had its abdomen open and so needed to be sacrificed. As medical students we were always looking for a free meal. I don’t remember how I got the rabbit, but I think I won it from my lab partners. I dressed it out, skinned it and took it home for us to eat. 

I had raised rabbits and slaughtered them and sold them to Safeway when I was living at home in Lander, so I was well acquainted with the process. 

We had invited the Halls to dinner and to look at our apartment. We told them that the rabbit had been the recipient of an injection of atropine and asked them if they had any hesitation about eating the rabbit. Helen was a nurse and she said that she was not afraid of the atropine and would eat rabbit with us. 

I cut up the rabbit as I had done before and Alice fried it. I looked appetizing. 

Then we tasted the rabbit. It was inedible. The ether used to put our rabbit to sleep had permeated all the fat cells in the animal. We felt sheepish to say the least. The meal was a disaster. 

Fortunately that did not dampen our friendship. We have been almost like family. We have tended each other's children, exchanged emails and visited from time to time. 

Although we have been known as food snobs. This shows that friendship trumps a memorable meal.