The Virginian-Pilot
                             THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT 
              Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: Thursday, February 13, 1997           TAG: 9702130373
SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B7   EDITION: FINAL 
SOURCE: BY NANCY LEWIS, STAFF WRITER 
DATELINE: NORFOLK                           LENGTH:   42 lines

MYSTERY SOLVED: THE LAWN BUNNY WAS SHANGHAIED

It turns out that Cornelia Holland's globe-trotting yard rabbit was bunny-napped by a group of Navy men.

The Norfolk woman was surprised last month when three men returned the wooden sign they'd taken two years earlier. They told her they'd brought it along on trips to famous places around the world and gave her a stack of pictures to prove it. Holland was speechless and didn't get the men's names.

Kay Lathrop of Endwell, N.Y., said Wednesday that she'd gotten to know the cottontail well, for it was her son Steve and his prankster friends who abducted the bunny. The Navy men took turns taking the rabbit along when they shipped out to ports of call around the world, she said.

``He traveled in many suitcases,'' Kay Lathrop said. ``There were quite a few guys involved.''

Steve Lathrop finished his stint in the Navy last month and returned to San Diego, where he is a student, and the prank was his idea, his mother said. The others are sailors aboard the destroyer Stout, recently returned from Puerto Rico and now at Norfolk Naval Shipyard in Portsmouth, she said.

In San Diego, Lathrop called his mother and told her that a Navy friend in Norfolk called to tell him the prank had been reported in The Virginian-Pilot recently. She contacted the newspaper Wednesday - and the cat, or yard bunny, was out of the bag.

When Steve Lathrop and his buddies brought the 10-inch-tall bunny back, they gave Holland 55 pictures that showed it at famous places: the Statue of Liberty, the Dead Sea, the Lincoln Memorial - even the Dallas Cowboys' locker room.

Steve Lathrop could not be reached for comment Wednesday, so Holland still doesn't know who the other Navy men are. Kay Lathrop said she was glad her son and his friends had returned the hare to its rightful owner.

``I told him you could tell by the way that bunny looked that somebody really cared about it. I asked him about it when he was home for Thanksgiving, and he said they were still waiting for some of the pictures to come back. . .

``They were deflated when they took it back. They didn't think the owner got a kick out of it, but they had a lot of fun with it.''


by CNB