The bunny of death

By all accounts, Casey Fish was a "smart, thoughtful" 12 year-old girl. On June 4, 1999, with just a few days left in sixth grade, Casey headed off to school.

She never came home again.

Casey Fish died surrounded by her helpless classmates, choking to death as a wet marshmallow expanded like a sponge, gradually blocking her throat. It's like drowning in quicksand: a slow but sure death, and all the struggling in the world can't stop it. It's probably pretty painless, but it comes with all the desperate lucidity of knowing you're about to die and nothing will prevent that.

Casey died playing a pretty harmless… hell, a downright cute-sounding game called "Chubby Bunny." For those of you who are blissfully ignorant, here's how the game works:

Participants stuff their mouths with marshmallows and the object of the game is to say the phrase "chubby bunny," a phrase that is apparently difficult to say with a gob full of marshmallows. No swallowing or chewing is allowed, and any participant who gags, coughs, or spits is out of the game. The winner is whoever manages to say the expression through the largest number of marshmallows.

Casey Fish broke the rules by swallowing a marshmallow. It lodged in her throat and moistened, expanded, cutting off her air. Her dad later remarked that it would be like "spraying Styrofoam down your throat."

I used to think that the stupidest, most ignominious way to die was being crushed by a vending machine. Sure, I guess breaking your neck while attempting auto-fellatio is probably worse, but I don't think that one ranks because the stats are probably pretty insignificant.

Vending machines are a silent and sometimes delicious killer. A November 1988 volume of the Journal of the American Medical Association documented 15 cases of people killed or severely injured by falling vending machines. Keep in mind however, that these aren't "falling" in the way that safes fall from the sky in a cartoon; they fall because some meathead is tipping them to get free stuff.

Some stats say that the number of people killed by falling vending machines each year numbers somewhere in the teens. There are no stats kept on how many people actually get their free stuff before being crushed to death by a half-ton metal box full of candy or pop.

Death by "chubby bunny" is not yet a widespread enough cause of death to top my list of humiliating ways to die. But the sheer absurdity makes it close. As well, the fact that this bloodthirsty bunny just claimed a Canadian life makes it a phenomenon worth keeping an eye on.

That's right Canadians, stop looking so smug. It's not just an American who died playing this stupid game. And it was a Canadian who's old enough to know better, too. Janet Rudd, a 32 year-old woman from London, Ont., died shortly after participating in the game at a fair.

On a personal level, I'm grappling with whether to feel sorry for them, or shrug this off as natural selection. Sure, call me cold-blooded, but this seems like a no-brainer.

"Hey, let's stuff our mouths full of food, then try to talk!"

"Let's get liquored up and go tightrope walking!"

"Let's tie our arms behind our backs and swim across Lake Ontario!"

I've always felt that marshmallows are inherently evil and mysterious, but that's an entry for another day… presuming I'm not crushed to death by a vending machine in the meantime.