【英语时差8,16】澳大利亚兔子（上）

（单词翻译）

In 1859, an unassuming Australian landowner named Thomas Austin got the hunting bug¹. Eager for something to shoot, he released twenty-four wild rabbits onto his property and had a jolly time tracking them down. Unfortunately, some of the rabbits managed to escape and, as rabbits are known to do, began to breed like…well, rabbits. By 1900, Austin was dead but his unwanted legacy² lived on in the form of a rabbit infestation³ that spread throughout the entire Australian continent. Desperate landowners scrambled⁴ to capture over two million rabbits per year, but this hardly made a dent⁵ in the rabbit population. Rabbits, it seemed, had taken up permanent residence down under.