Jim Bunny Rogers Rabbits www.sunlive.co.nz

'He's totally chuckle, fall-about April Fools' Day funny that guy,” said Mrs Jim Bunny, aka ‘the Doe', over a carrot juice aperitif the other evening. 'Who's totally chuckle, fall-about April Fools' Day funny?,” I asked.

'Chris.”

'Cabbage Patch Chris or Twerpy Chris?”

'Twerpy? Don't you mean Chippy?”

'Okay – but he's still twerpy, still annoying. What was so April Fools' day funny?”

'Well, he's given adult minimum wage earners a raise. But it's just $1.50 extra an hour – from $21.20 to $22.70 an hour. Is it an April Fools' Day joke?”

But let's do some sums – by saving that extra $1.50 an hour for three hours, minimum wage earners could afford a pie for lunch at Twerpy's...I mean Chippy's favourite, go-to Upper Hutt bakery. The one where Police Minister Ginny gets free pies. And she's on top dollar.

'Top?”

'Well, as a Crown Minister she gets $288,900 a year, about $5555 a week, and about $139 an hour if she only did a 40-hour week. And a free pie.” But, in a magnanimous show of solidarity with the proletariat, she wouldn't qualify for the extra $1.50 an hour.

If minimum wage earners save their $1.50 slice of Chippy's new pay pie, it will only take about 9.5 hours' work to afford a $14 tub of Cabbage Patch Chris' favourite ice cream – the high-end label one with chewy marshmallows and gooey caramel in chocolate ice cream. Cabbage Patch Chris doesn't do minimum wage worker hokey pokey or vanilla.

But it gets funnier by the April Fools' minute.

In France...

Because, if minimum wage earners continue to save their $1.50 an hour windfall, it would only take 658,591 hours work to accumulate the $987,887 – the median house price in New Zealand last year. That's 316 working years, three-and-a-half average lifespans. 'Even minimum wage earners would have to see the uproariously funny April Fools side of that.” Seems $1.50 doesn't go very far very fast.

Anyhow – I suspect history has played an April Fools' joke on us all because it's not exactly clear how all this nonsense came about. But it may have started in France.

'Mes chers petit lapins,” Pope Gregory X111 said to 16th Century France. 'We are switching from the Julian calendar which begins March with the spring equinox to the internationally accepted civil Gregorian calendar.”

But at the time French devices were a bit ‘inutile' – a bit dickey – and not everyone got the Vatican email. Some French continued celebrating New Year in March and were the butt of jokes. One prank involved paper fish being stuck on their back because they were called ‘poison d'avril' or ‘April fish'. Hilarious.

Other French were just as protective of their Julian calendar as some are today of their age 62 pension plans and refused to acknowledge the change. 'Perhaps 16th Century French also set the streets alight in protest, perhaps they too let the rats and rubbish pile up,” says JB. His long ears alert and almost touching the roof of the warren.

Historically the French love a bit of a stink, a revolution. 'They could all yell ‘qu'on leur coupe la tete' – ‘off with their heads' – instead of April fool! Messier but much, much funnier.”

The April Fool Day prank lingers today. 'But not as much I sense,” said ‘the doe,' twitching her cute, furry, bunny nose. There was the April Fools story about the Northland farmer who spent decades getting rid of gorse. Then one morning as he was quietly gorging himself on four rashers of good old fashioned hardwood smoked bacon and three eggs sunny side down as a protest at daylight saving, he sees something that makes his heart drop clean through his Red Bands. Overnight a mature gorse bush had grown right in the middle of the house paddock. He openly wept until his wife yelled: 'April fool! April fool, April fool!” The gorse had been put there overnight by some sick family jokester.

Jim Bunny isn't laughing. 'I would have woken the ghosts of Samuel Marsden and told them to find some 245-T to get rid of it. After all, it was the missionaries who committed a godless act by introducing gorse in the first place.”

Introduced species

'Tsk tsk,” said ‘the doe'. 'Be careful what you wish for dear. We bunnies are an introduced species too, and a pest. Like gorse, we are not loved.”

This bunny even thought of floating an April Fools' day story which might trigger discussion, alarm, or outrage, or all three. It's the April Fools' devil in us all.

How about a plan to build a gondola to the summit of Mauao? And a skyline wine bar where we could soak up the sav blanc as well as the vistas? But trickery doesn't serve our readership. You could rightfully wonder what other half-truths and nonsense are being passed off as legitimate news.

Email: hunter@thesun.co.nz with your thoughts on April foolery, minimum wage, gondolas etc!