A SHORT TALE OF A RABBIT

(Reprinted by permission of Canada West Monthly.)

Johnny was the only John rabbit in the family that lived in the poplar bluff in the pasture.  He had a bold and adventurous spirit, but was sadly hampered by his mother’s watchfulness.  She was as full of warnings as the sign-board at the railway crossing.  It was “Look out for the cars!” all the time with mother.  She warned him of dogs and foxes, hawks and snakes, boys and men.  It was in vain that Johnny showed her his paces—­how he could leap and jump and run.  She admitted that he was quite a smart little rabbit for his age, but—­oh, well! you know what mothers are like.

Johnny was really tired of it, and then, too, Johnny had found out that what mother had said about dogs was very much exaggerated.  Johnny had met two dogs, so he thought he knew something about them.  One was a sleek, fat, black puppy, with a vapid smile, called Juno; and the other was an amber-eyed spaniel with woolly, fat legs.  They had run after Johnny one day when he was out playing on the road, and he had led them across a ploughed field.  Johnny was accustomed to add, as he told the story to the young rabbits that lived down in the pasture, that he had to spurt around the field a few times after the race was over just to limber up his legs—­he was so cramped from sitting around waiting for the dogs.  So it came about that Johnny, in his poor, foolish little heart, thought dogs were just a joke.

Johnny’s mother told him that all men were bad, and the men who carried guns were worst of all, for guns spit out fire and death.  She said there were men who wore coats the color of dead grass, and drove in rigs that rattled and had dogs with them, and they killed ducks and geese that were away up in the air.  She said those men drove miles and miles just to kill things, and they lived sometimes in a little house away out near the lakes where the ducks stayed, and they didn’t mind getting up early in the morning or sitting up at night to get a shot at a duck, and when they got the ducks they just gave them away.  If half what old Mrs. Rabbit said about them was true, they certainly were the Bad Men from Bitter Creek!  Johnny listened, big-eyed, to all this, and there were times when he was almost afraid to go to bed.  Still, when he found out that dogs were not so dangerous, he began to think his mother might have overstated the man question, too.

One day Johnny got away from his mother, when she was busy training the other little rabbits in the old trick of dodging under the wire fence just when the dog is going to grab you.  Johnny knew how it was done—­it was as easy as rolling off a log for him, and so he ran away.  He came up at the Agricultural Grounds.  He had often been close to the fence before, but his mother had said decidedly he must never go in.