Once, there was a little rabbit who had soft pink ears, bright red eyes, and a short, fluffy tail. Insomuch as features in line with stereotypical species-related body expectations is a legitimate criteria for a working definition of the subjective measure of “cute,” he was, indeed, such a cute little rabbit.

But the little rabbit wasn’t happy, because he was fifteen, mostly, but also because he was smack dab in the middle of an identity crisis that he was struggling to resolve. On any given day he was attracted to various qualities in the diverse array of body and personality styles he saw around him in his metropolitan forest home. Whether it was Mr. Bushytail’s…y’know…bushy tail, Mrs. Porcupine’s prickly armor, or Mrs. Puddleduck’s cool red golashas, the little rabbit simply couldn’t figure out who he wanted to be. Or even look like.

While his mother simply allowed the little rabbit to wish aloud for all the many different features of their neighbors, opting for cool disengagement and hoping her son would work it out himself, instead of attempting to tell the rabbit that he was a rabbit, dang it, so knock it off and work that cotton tail like a playa, old Mr. Groundhog, the Rabbits’ neighbor, was kind of a jerk. Retired after a lifetime of teaching philosophy and theater at the well-renowned but liberal university in the next clearing, Mr. Groundhog was bored and moderately entertained by his role-confused little neighbor.

“Hey,” old Mr. Groundhog whispered as the little rabbit sat in the courtyard watching the comings and goings of the hollow tree’s residents and wishing to be like every single one of them, with no insight or discretion whatsoever. “Look, there’s a magic wishing well out behind the middle school,” Mr. Groundhog told the poor little rabbit. “You want to be different? Hop on down there and take three sips from it, you’ll get whatever you wish for.”

So the impressionable young rabbit hopped off in search of the wishing well.

What Mr. Groundhog failed to mention was that the wishing well was really just a rotten old hemlock stump that had been collecting the rainwater from the unseasonably wet summer they’d been having. The whole stump was just filled to the brim with fetid black water that Mr. Groundhog had been considering bottling and selling as bootleg hooch until this afternoon. It was sure to have stewed in the poison carcass of the tree long enough to be at least mildly intoxicating. Mr. Groundhog figured he’d let the dumb little rabbit test it out and if he didn’t have a stroke or anything he’d start collecting the stuff later that week.

The little rabbit came upon the hemlock stump after a short hop into the woods behind the school. When he got there, he saw the coolest little cardinal sitting on the edge of the stump preening its wings. The little rabbit hopped forward, intending to introduce himself and get a better look at the creature, but the bird flittered off at his approach and the little rabbit sat there watching him go and wishing to himself, “oh, I wish I had a super cool pair of red wings like that dude.”

The little rabbit looked down into the black water in the stump and sniffed it. It made him throw up a little in his mouth, but he really wanted some red wings like the cardinal. So he pinched his nose, stuck out his tongue, and lapped up three solid sips of poison rain water from the stump. Then he had to lay down in a shady patch under the canopy because he’d never been drunk before and he was pretty sure he was literally dying.

When he woke up, his stomach had stopped seizing but when he turned around to figure out where he was, because the hallucinogenic stump water had messed with his short term memory, he almost crapped his pants. Except that rabbits don’t wear pants. So. There on his back was a bear of big old red wings.

“Holy balls,” the rabbit whispered. He had no idea that he was tripping hard and that, although it appeared to be nighttime he’d only been passed out for around sixteen minutes. The little rabbit focused all his inebriated attention on the wings and he really believed, as he ran back to his home through the winding forest path, that he was flying.

The little rabbit knocked on his mother’s door, because he wasn’t entirely sure that he actually lived there and didn’t want to get shot by any of his second amendment loving and moderately paranoid neighbors. His mother opened the door and was like “what the actual heck, Connor,” his mother asked him, shocked. There before her stood her little white rabbit, entirely spun. He was sweaty and muddy and drooling and his pupils were, like, the size of his entire eye socket.

“Nope,” the little rabbit’s mother said, gathering her jacket and insurance cards and scooping the little rabbit in her mouth by the scruff of his twisted neck. Mother rabbit arrived at the ER and immediately requested psych eval, explaining to the psych tech that she was there to 302 her son, with whom she’d clearly taken too laissez-faire an approach with during his clear identity crisis, which had initially presented as just developmentally appropriate ambivalence toward hard and fast personality choices.

And that little rabbit, children, is the absolutely factual basis for the classic human scarelore story about the rabbit who’s been institutionalized since 1962 and currently lives his life as a glass of orange juice in a locked ward.