Best Reminder that South Florida Is Still the South

When a tourist from the big city saw a bevy of bunnies running from a freshly cleared sugar-cane field, he freaked and phoned People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. But little did that Yankee carpetbagger know that that's just the way it's done in Pahokee. Every January during sugar-cane harvest season, a few agile boys in the town of 6900 take to the "rundown," the sport of scrambling after rabbits fleeing the burning fields -- shooting Peter Cottontail, skinning their prizes, and selling them for $2 a hop. Call it barbaric if you will, but many in this hamlet directly east of State Hwy. 715 say it's basic training for their high school's future track and football stars.