Mine didn’t scream either. One of them did give me the claw though.
We used to have a labrador that would catch rabbits in the back yard and bring them to us. She didn’t hurt them at all, she just caught them, picked them up by the scruff of the neck and tried to bring them inside. The poor things were just terrified. We’d make her drop them and leave them alone.
Every once in a while she’d get one that would make a little squealy-screamy sound, kind of like the noise a guinea pig makes…not exactly, but similar. The “screamer” may have been the same one every time; they all looked alike to me.
I have a pet rabbit, and he can be pretty vocal at times. If we wipe the floor around his cage, he seems to think we’re intruding on his territory and he’ll lunge and make a threatening, nasal “hhhnnnnnk” noise. He also makes the noise if we he corner him when we’re chasing him around.
He can also make this very quiet, grunting “want” noise (whether it’s a treat or just petting)… it’s irresistable!
Already been done. Early Star Wars episode were Captain Kirk lands on a planet of sapient trees. He breaks a branch off a tree and it screams at him.
And, no, I am not a Star Wars geek. I saw the episode when I was about 10 and I just happen to remember it.
Or if you want to get a bit more literary, in one of the levels of Dante’s Inferno (can’t remember) he enters a forest where the souls of sinners have been imprisoned in trees and bushes. When Dante accidentally breaks a branch off one, the bush screams at him and abuses him
pincushion isn’t that the same rabbit that attacked [url=http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a4_019.html]Jimmy Carter](http://www.geocities.com/seanjkerrigan/ScreamingTrees.html)?
LouisBfreezing them first sends them into a sort of coma or state of suspended animation and is one of the recommended ways of humanely killing lobsters and crabs prior to boiling. Killing them quickly by driving a knife between their eyes or severing their spinal chords is another.
No kidding.
Damn, what happened to my post? I think I forgot to close off the url code. I’ll try again:
re: Screaming trees
quote:
Originally posted by Mangetout
I was about to suggest It would make a great title for a SF story though, now that I’ve done the easy part (the title), would anyone else care to complete the easy task of creating a suitable plot and so on…
Already been done. Early Star Wars episode where Captain Kirk lands on a planet of sapient trees. He breaks a branch off a tree and the tree screams at him.
And, no, I am not a Star Wars geek. I saw the episode when I was about 10 and I just happen to remember it.
Or if you want to get a bit more literary, in one of the levels of Dante’s Inferno (can’t remember) he enters a forest where the souls of sinners have been imprisoned in trees and bushes. When Dante accidentally breaks a branch off one, the bush screams at him and abuses him
pincushion isn’t that the same rabbit that attacked Jimmy Carter?
LouisB freezing them first sends them into a sort of coma or state of suspended animation and is one of the recommended ways of humanely killing lobsters and crabs prior to boiling. Killing them quickly by driving a knife between their eyes or severing their spinal chords is another.
and… ummm… can we make that Star Trek. I’ll just slink away now.
My rabbit makes noises when its annoyed. It’s kind of a “neep neep neep”. One time it got out of its cage and my dog grabbed it. The dog got it between its front legs, laid down and licked it. The rabbit was freaked out but didn’t make any noise.
As for lobsters, we’ve cooked some in out kitchen and I’ve never heard anything out of them. Cept for the occasional click of they’re claws.
“We are the Rabbits Who Say NEEP! We demand … A CABBAGE!”
Sounds like something one of my dogs would do. He’s a lummoxy-type, with a love of licking hands, and legs, and feet, and sofas…
Yes, he’s as thick as a brick but he’s lovable. 
Ah, screaming trees.
There’s at least one good comic book example of this I can think of, in Alan Moore’s THE BALLAD OF HALO JONES. The heroine, Halo, temporarily takes a job as a lumberjack on a woodworld where the trees adapted a survival trick to resist being cut down: first, they rearranged their bark into a ‘recognizable pardoy of a human face.’ Then, if trees were cut, hollowed out upper branches would open and funnel wind through the shafts, producing noises that sounded like ‘children screaming.’ Few seasoned lumberjacks would last very long under those conditions, as the atmosphere on the planet was apparently very depressing; Our Heroine quits after a few days.
It’s a throwaway detail of Moore’s that lasts, heck, five panels at the most, but one I always enjoyed reading. Makes you wonder why REAL trees on Earth never adapted this trick.
Can’t say enough about Moore’s work, and I believe the collected trade paperback of HALO JONES is available either through Titan Books or 2000 A.D.
I remember reading a long time ago a sf short story on this topic. A man developes a machine to detect extremely high sound frequencies and convert them into the human audible range, only to discover that trees (and all plants, too) scream horribly when harmed. I think it was an early Arthur C. Clark early collection, perhaps “Tales from the White Hart”, published in 1957 (or another “White Hart” collection). I tried a search, but could not find any synopses of the stories.
How’d you like it if someone picked your apples?
Meliadus, I know the story you’re talking about. It’s by H. G. Wells, I believe. Either him or Roald Dahl, but I’m pretty sure it’s Wells. I know I read that story in one of their short stories collections.
My cat caught a wild rabbit (once she actually caught a chicken hawk and tore it’s legs off, but that’s a story for another time). She likes to catch things and bring them in the house to kill. This rabbit was SCREAMING! Woke the whole house up.
The dogs just look at me and shake their heads as if to say, “Hey, you’re the one who wanted a cat.” I keep trying to tell them that it was the missus that wanted the cat. But they, being dogs and not privy to human “keeping the peace”, just look disappointed in me as the alpha male.
I’ve cooked many lobsters. I had one squeal similar to a teapot momentarily, once when I was steaming it. Closest thing I ever came to a scream.
Oddly enough, my first thought was H. G. Wells, so you may be correct. I thought it unlikely to be him because the base technology of the idea described seemed a little bit too advanced. I have read very little of Roald Dahl, so I doubt that it was one of his stories.
It’s Roald Dahl’s “The Sound Machine.” Here’s a synopsis, with spoilers, of course, but probably no more than previously posted.
It seems that sometimes people are a little squeamish about cooking and eating lobsters. Alton Brown on Good Eats pointed out that lobsters (and shrimp) are more closely related to cockroaches, than for instance cows are.
It seems only the fact that we have to dispatch the lobster ourselves means we think about the wee beastie at all.
So, think of it as a giant bug that you ::really:: wouldn’t want to see lots of running round your kitchen late at night, and the whole cooking process should be a little smoother. 
. . . So it’s pretty safe to assume that bunnies would scream when you drop them into the pot of boiling water? Just wanted to make sure, as I’ll have trouble enough breaking into his house so the neighbors don’t . . . Oops, I’ve said too much . . .
Yeeeaaahhhhhhh!
Enough, already!
Eve,
That was you that dispatched my daughter’s bunny?!?!?
Oh, well…small price to pay for that crazy, nasty sex we had on the kitchen counter a few days ago…