For example, take the wanted poster for one Dennis Nathaniel Rabbit, published by the bureau earlier this year and currently on exhibition in post-office lobbies across the land. Mr. Rabbit ("Bunny Rabbit," inevitably, is one of his listed aliases) is bad news. He's been convicted of assault, forgery and burglary, and is now being sought on a federal warrant for unlawful flight to avoid prosecution as St. Louis' "South Side Rapist." The bureau is offering a $25,000 reward for his apprehension. But it's also employing subtler methods, which are clearly concocted to flush the felonious flop-eared brute from his briar patch.

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Mr. Rabbit's wanted poster begins, conventionally enough, with date and place of birth, color of eyes and hair (fur?), and height and weight ("250 pounds" -- that's a weally weighty wabbit). Then comes the entry for "build," and here we start to see evidence of the bureau's new emphasis on authorial subjectivity. Rabbit's physique is described as "dumpy." Then, a few lines below, after the FBI writer has wisely let the renegade Rabbit's Social Security and driver's license numbers speak for themselves, comes a bit of trenchant jocularity. Next to "Remarks" the wry scribe has seen fit to include this telling dental characteristic: "buck teeth." (What? No poofy tail? No weakness for root vegetables?) What self-respecting mega-fauna thug -- bunnylike though he may be -- who, through no fault of his own, is saddled with the moniker of Rabbit, can stay out in the cold for long when such snide, grade-school taunts are being leveled?

My guess is that the FBI's sly trap will prove effective on Mr. Rabbit and he will soon come hopping right into the bureau's parsley patch, proving the success of the Hooverians' latest crime-fighting innovation and opening up a whole new revenue stream for creative writers with axes to grind.

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