For me, all bridge humor begins with the late Victor Mollo's Bridge in the Menagerie. When I first decided that I would learn to play bridge, I went to the library and took out the two bridge books that were there. One, Goren's Bridge Complete, was 700 pages of stultifyingly boring rules. The other, a small book called Bridge in the Menagerie, made absolutely no sense whatsoever but it captured my imagination in way that would ultimately change my life.  Mollo's characters, most of whom are animals, are all of us, with our foibles and frailties, and the deals he chooses for their adventures at the table are both wickedly funny and enduringly illuminating. No bridge player could ever aspire to greatness without having a healthy dose of the Hideous Hog in them, but it is the Rueful Rabbit who has always best captured my imagination and sense of humor. By mis-sorting his hand, losing a card under his chair, or through willful attempts at misplay to exact revenge for an inappropriate comment from his partner (the Hog, of course), the utterly clueless Rabbit manages to find spectacular bids and plays that even the world's best players could rarely hope to execute.

Since before the internet was the internet, in the days when everyone knew Matt and Merja and each other, I have been the Rueful Rabbit, and as I have re-entered the world of face-to-face play, I find that it still feels like the right persona. In the fall of 2023, during Halloween weekend and the week that followed, my wonderful partners all joined me at a sectional in Orange and a regional in Marlboro as rabbits, and I could not have felt more like the luckiest Rabbit in the world.