This was the latest study that Rag took up with his mother-it was really a post-graduate course, for many little rabbits never learn it at all.

VI

No wild animal dies of old age.  Its life has soon or late a tragic end.  It is only a question of how long it can hold out against its foes.  But Rag’s life was proof that once a rabbit passes out of his youth he is likely to outlive his prime and be killed only in the last third of life, the downhill third we call old age.

The Cottontails had enemies on every side.  Their daily life was a series of escapes.  For dogs, foxes, cats, skunks, coons, weasels, minks, snakes, hawks, owls, and men, and even insects were all plotting to kill them.  They had hundreds of adventures, and at least once a day they had to fly for their lives and save themselves by their legs and wits.

More than once that hateful fox from Springfield drove them to taking refuge under the wreck of a barbed-wire hog-pen by the spring.  But once there they could look calmly at him while he spiked his legs in vain attempts to reach them.

Once or twice Rag when hunted had played off the hound against a skunk that had seemed likely to be quite as dangerous as the dog.

Once he was caught alive by a hunter who had a hound and a ferret to help him.  But Rag had the luck to escape next day, with a yet deeper distrust of ground holes.  He was several times run into the water by the cat, and many times was chased by hawks and owls, but for each kind of danger there was a safeguard.  His mother taught him the principal dodges, and he improved on them and made many new ones as he grew older.  And the older and wiser he grew the less he trusted to his legs, and the more to his wits for safety.

Ranger was the name of a young hound in the neighborhood.  To train him his master used to put him on the trail of one of the Cottontails.  It was nearly always Rag that they ran, for the young buck enjoyed the runs as much as they did, the spice of danger in them being just enough for zest.  He would say: 

“Oh, mother! here comes the dog again, I must have a run to-day.”

“You are too bold, Raggy, my son!” she might reply.  “I fear you will run once too often.”

“But, mother, it is such glorious fun to tease that fool dog, and it’s all good training.  I’ll thump if I am too hard pressed, then you can come and change off while I get my second wind.”

On he would come, and Ranger would take the trail and follow till Rag got tired of it.  Then he either sent a thumping telegram for help, which brought Molly to take charge of the dog, or he got rid of the dog by some clever trick.  A description of one of these shows how well Rag had learned the arts of the woods.