Rabbit's Lesson

A short story first published on Wattpad in 2018

There once was a Wood with a mind of its own. And each little animal therein lived its own way and served its own purpose. When the Wood put its mind to work, its thoughts took shape as the multifarious interactions of all those who dwelt there. It was not given to these creatures to know the roles they played, lest they second-guess themselves and gum up the works.

In those days, in that place, every individual animal was one of a kind and not another bore its name. Rabbit, for example, was the only one in all the Wood to have long ears and long feet and a cozy little cottage underground. Mean old Mr. Hare was passing similar in appearance but otherwise nothing at all like dear little Rabbit, who was loved by every tender-hearted creature in the Wood. They loved the way she scampered about, darting here and there, now freezing in place, now disappearing underground.

Of course, not every animal possessed a tender heart—a lesson which Mr. Hare took it upon himself to teach young Rabbit once and for all. So one day, Hare called on his friend Granny Spider to put a good scare into Rabbit. Granny Spider crawled right up to where Rabbit was sitting and struck her most menacing pose. But Rabbit was busy nibbling a dandelion and took no notice.

Just then, a bird named Robin saw the threat, swooped down, and gobbled Granny Spider right up. Mr. Hare was shocked and saddened to lose his friend so abruptly, but the Wood soon produced another Spider to take her place. In those days, no animal stayed dead for long.

Taking a lesson of his own from this setback, Mr. Hare resolved to cut a deal with Dr. Fox, an animal with many formidable qualities: speed, intelligence, ferocity… More than a match for a pipsqueak do-gooder like Robin. But when Hare told Fox his plan, the good doctor just hemmed and hawed and bit the end of her glasses.

“I don’t know…” she wheedled, “I’m really not half so ferocious as creatures say. Perhaps if you found someone bigger, tougher… like… Wolf, maybe?”

And so Mr. Hare accompanied sly Dr. Fox right up to the door of Wolf’s den. But upon seeing just how large that door was and imagining what a large animal must live inside, Hare’s courage faltered.

“It—it’s not that I don’t w-w-want to go in, you see; it’s j-j-just that I—I… Well, you see, I…” Fox let poor old Mr. Hare go on like this for a very long minute until at last she offered to go in alone and broker the deal.

That evening, as Rabbit began her sunset frolic through the misty meadow, Mr. Hare watched nervously from behind a shrub. He was wretched with a nagging sense that he’d overlooked something about his arrangement with Wolf. Hare would never have contacted such a bloodthirsty beast on his own, but Dr. Fox had convinced him. She knew more about such matters, after all; Hare wasn’t even a predator himself.

And then Mr. Hare saw a glint of sunlight in a pair of yellow eyes across the clearing. There was no rational soul behind them. They were calm enough, but hungry, greedy… empty. It was Wolf, stalking his prey—stalking Rabbit. In another instant, Wolf had leapt out from his hiding place, and before Hare could stop himself, so had he.

In the sudden commotion, Rabbit froze with fear. Wolf was able to reach the poor dear before Mr. Hare was even halfway there. But lucky for Rabbit, Wolf was on the lookout for a heavier meal. And there he was, just as Fox had promised. Wolf snapped his powerful jaws around Mr. Hare’s neck and swallowed him down in two quick gulps.

At once, all the tender-hearted animals of the Wood converged on that savage Wolf, pecking and biting and scratching him all over his mangy, flea-bitten hide. These thousand little agonies sent Wolf yelping and yowling and running for cover, deep into the dark of the wise Wood.

All the while, Rabbit just sat there, stunned. She wasn’t particularly fond of old Mr. Hare, but surely he didn’t deserve to be gobbled up by a beast like Wolf. How could the Wood allow such a tragedy? It didn’t seem at all fair for creatures with sharp teeth to go feasting on those without, just because they could.

Rabbit was so deep in thought that it took her a moment to hear the pitiful sobbing of Dr. Fox a little ways off. “Oh, he was such a dear friend,” she wailed.

They were alone in the meadow. Cautiously, tentatively, Rabbit hopped over to comfort poor Dr. Fox. It seemed there was at least one tender-hearted creature among the sharp-toothed.

And then, of course, Fox had her dinner.