CHAPTER IV

FLOP EAR IN THE HAY

The little lost rabbit sat up on his hind legs and looked all around him. He was in the middle of a big wood, and while he liked the trees, the moss and the fallen leaves, which rustled under his feet, still Flop Ear liked best his own wood, where he had always lived. He did not know this wood at all.

“I wonder where Pink Nose and Snuggle are,” thought Flop Ear. “I wonder if they are lost, as I am.”

Then, even though he was lost, Flop Ear could not help feeling hungry, and, as he saw before him a tree, the bark of which he knew was good to eat, he nibbled some of it.

“That makes me feel a little better,” he said to himself. “Now I will try once more to find my house and my father and mother.”

Again Flop Ear set off through the woods, looking all about him for a sight of the open door of his burrow underground. But though he saw holes where groundhogs, or woodchucks, lived in fields near the woods, and though he saw some holes in which snakes crawled, he did not see his own home, and it made him lonesome.

Then he happened to remember a way rabbits have of calling to one another by thumping their feet on the ground. If you try that you can signal just as rabbits do, though you may not be able to make your thumps on the ground mean anything. If you go out in the yard some warm Summer day, and put your ear to the ground, and then some other boy or girl, some distance off, will pound his heel on the earth, you can hear it quite plainly.

That is the way rabbits call to one another when they are too far off to talk, for a rabbit does not have a very loud voice. And a rabbit does not need to put his ear to the ground to listen to the thumps of another rabbit. He can hear well enough without that.

“That’s what I’ll do,” thought Flop Ear. “I’ll give a pounding call, and papa or mamma may be near enough to hear. Oh, I hope they are, for I want to go home!”

Flop Ear raised himself on his hind feet, and then he thumped with his front feet two or three times, making a sound like a little drum. Then Flop Ear listened. He did not hear any other thumps in answer to his own.

“Well, I’ll go on a little way and try once more,” he said to himself. “Maybe they will hear this time.”

Once more Flop Ear thumped on the ground. But though he listened very sharply all he could hear was the wind blowing through the trees, and the dried leaves rustling as he scampered through them.

“Oh dear!” thought poor Flop Ear. “I don’t know what to do. I surely am lost worse than I ever was before.”

Once, when he was a little baby rabbit, Flop Ear had wandered a little way off from the burrow. His mother had been with him, but he ran on ahead. And, when he looked back, he could not see his mother, nor the burrow where he lived.

He had been very much frightened then, and he had started to cry, being only a baby, and much afraid of being lost. But then his mother suddenly came running around a stump, behind which she had gone to get some nice red wintergreen berries, and she dried the tears of Flop Ear on her soft fur, and showed him that the burrow was only about two jumps away, behind a big rock.

“I was only lost a little bit that time,” thought Flop Ear, “but this time I am lost a whole lot. I wish I had not run so far from home. Why, I am a regular runaway, like Don, the dog, and I’m lost, just as Blackie was. I told her I’d never run away from my home, but I did.

“But I did not mean to,” went on Flop Ear. “It was the hunter, with his dog and gun, who drove me away from home. I’d never run away from it myself. But what shall I do?”

Flop Ear was tired from running so much, and from thumping on the ground, so when he found a place where some soft moss grew near a tree he lay down to rest. And, all the while, he wondered how he was ever going to get home again.

Then, up in the tree over his head Flop Ear heard a bird singing. And as he could speak bird language, as well as animal talk, Flop Ear asked:

“Little bird, do you know where my home is? I am lost.”

“Chirp! Chirp!” answered the little bird. “No, I am sorry to say I do not know where your home is. But, if you like, you may come and live in my house.”

“And where is your house?” asked Flop Ear, thinking he might stay there over night, as it was now getting rather dark.

“My home is a nice nest up in this tree,” chirped the bird. “If you come up, though, you must be very careful, for I have eggs in my nest.”

“What are you going to do with them, color them for Easter?” asked Flop Ear, for, being a rabbit he knew about Easter eggs, you see.

“What! Color my nice eggs?” cried the bird. “No indeed! I am going to hatch some little birdies out of them. Besides, my eggs are colored already. They are a beautiful blue. If you come up you can see them.”

“If your eggs are blue, then you must be a robin-bird,” said Flop Ear.

“I am,” was the answer. “Are you coming up to stay in my nest? But please be careful not to break the eggs if you do.”

“No, thank you, I can not come up,” said Flop Ear. “It is very kind of you to ask me, but I can not climb a tree. And, besides, I am afraid I am too large to fit in your nest without breaking the eggs.”

“Well, perhaps you are,” the bird said. “But I am sorry you are lost.”

“I’m sorry, too,” said Flop Ear.

“Perhaps I can fly around and look for your burrow,” the robin-bird said. “Shall I try?”

“If you please,” Flop Ear answered.

So the bird flew around through the woods, looking down on the ground trying to see Flop Ear’s home. But she could not, for the little rabbit had run very fast to get away from the hunter, and had traveled farther than he thought he had.

“No, I can not find your home, I am sorry to say,” said the bird as she came back to the tree under which Flop Ear was resting. “I could not see it anywhere.”

“Never mind, you did the best you could, and I thank you,” returned the rabbit. “I’ll run along myself and see if I can find it. If I can’t, I suppose I shall have to stay out in the woods all night.”

“I do that myself, up in my nest,” said the robin. “So if you get lonesome come and sleep near this tree.”

“I will, thank you,” answered Flop Ear.

Off he went again, and then, all of a sudden, Flop Ear heard that dreadful banging noise of the gun again, though it was not very close to him.

“Oh, there’s that dreadful hunter once more!” cried the little rabbit. “I must run on again.”

Pretty soon Flop Ear was tired and he had to stop to rest. He listened but did not hear the gun again. It was almost dark now, and Flop Ear remembered what his father had said, that the hunter men did not stay out to shoot after dark.

“So I’ll be all right for a while,” said Flop Ear.

On and on he went, now and then stopping to nibble at some sweet bark, or pick up a few berries, and pretty soon Flop Ear came out of the woods and found himself in a field.

“Ha! Maybe I can find some cabbages or carrots in here,” he thought.

But as soon as Flop Ear looked at the field he knew it was neither a cabbage nor a carrot field. There was short, stubbly grass in the field. It was what is called a meadow, like the one where the sheep were, for which Little Boy Blue had to blow his horn.

In the middle of the field was something that looked like a big hill, or a small mountain.

“I wonder what that is,” said Flop Ear to himself. “I guess I’ll hop over and take a look.”

Across the meadow he went and when he came to the big pile he found it was hay, that had been cut and stacked up, ready to be hauled into the barn.

“Ha! Hay!” said Flop Ear. “I can burrow under that and sleep to-night. It will be a nice place, and no hunter can find me there. I can also eat some of the hay.”

Hay is grass, dried, you know, and rabbits like to nibble a little of it.

So Flop Ear crawled under the stack of hay and, after eating a little, he felt sleepy. His eyes closed.