Mystery Object

In this summer of strange weather it hadn’t gone unnoticed that a small area of Askam had suffered more than most. An unnamed resident contacted the Askam Herald and claimed that in the middle of the last torrential downpour a small patch of ground became so hot that the grass began to wilt and smoke appeared to rise.
The resident was so alarmed that they have refused to even tell their neighbour what had happened, even though a second patch has appeared on their lawn. Our reporter, under the cover of nightfall paid a visit to the garden to discover for themselves the phenomenon. After agreeing on the cover story, the reporter camped out on the lawn posing as the long lost cousin and began to wait for rain. It didn’t take that long.
In the middle of the first night a vibration began to emanate from the floor of the tent. At first the reporter thought that it might have been the lady of the house bringing him a cup of hot chocolate as it hadn’t began to rain, nor even cloud over, but he soon realised that something else was happening. A circle, six inches in diameter, in the centre of the ground sheet began to singe and scorch and then burst into flames. The reporter had just finished patting out the flames with a near at hand book, when the ground below began to break

A glowing green shape emerged from the patch and looked directly at the reporter. The give away clue to its character was a carrot that was hanging out of its mouth. The reporter had to take a second look before the shape was confirmed as a rabbit. In a split second the rabbit disappeared back down the hole and although the reporter tried to plunge his hand down the hole the intense heat beat him back and the rabbit was gone.
After several phone calls to Cambridge and Oxford Universities, our reporter was still left with a blank as to the correct diagnosis of the rabbits condition. The experts called him a crank and a charlatan, and the householder explained that was why she had wanted to remain anonymous.
Not wanting to give up, the reporter once again took to his tent and spent the next couple of nights on rabbit watch. On the sixteenth night, the ground once again began to singe. The reporter sat back with camera in hand and waited for the carrot toting rabbit to appear. When its head appeared the reporter took a photograph (see above) but as you can see the results were not as expected. The rabbit disappeared and has not been seen since.
If you know of the existence of the rabbit, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with The Askam Herald and we will report back.