A young couple had moved into a cottage in the Gloucestershire countryside next door to a family with young children. The children were devoted to their elderly white angora rabbit. One week the family had gone away for a long weekend at Euro Disney and asked their new neighbours to keep an eye on things.

All seemed quiet until the final morning when their dog came sauntering up the garden with the muddy corpse of their neighbour's rabbit hanging from its mouth. As there were no teeth marks or blood they assumed their dog had broken the rabbit's neck and decided to shampoo its fur, dry it off and place it carefully back in the cage in the garden, hoping the family would assume the bunny had died of natural causes over the weekend.

When the family returned the following day the nervous couple kept a deliberately low profile until the father dropped in for a chat. The young couple were visibly nervous. They asked how the trip had gone, 'Yes, it went very well thanks, but the strangest thing has happened. The kids' pet rabbit died on the day we left so we buried it in the back garden, by the fence. Then, this afternoon we return to find it back in it's cage, as clean as a whistle'.

Although this Urban Myth may well have some truth to it, it is a story that has appeared in many forms including the neighbour's replacing the dead rabbit with an identical live one and also similar tales involving dogs, cats and other pets.