Multiplying rabbits

Regarding our family superstition that "Rabbit rabbit rabbit" must be said as one's first words on the first day of the month, Jeremy Tolbert writes:

In my family, we say "white rabbit" three times when smoke at a campfire is blowing your way to "make it turn away." I wonder if the superstitions are related?

I'm sure they are, like all the other good-luck superstitions involving rabbits, the proverbial "rabbit's foot" being the most famous.

Could the old superstition be one of the reasons that Lewis Carroll has Alice encounter the White Rabbit first, among all the denizens of Wonderland?

Why should rabbits be associated with good fortune, I wonder? Must be their reproductive skills.

For a very different take on rabbits, read Kelly Link's brilliant story "Stone Animals" in Magic for Beginners.