CHAPTER V

FLOP EAR AND THE BOY

Flop Ear awoke in the morning feeling hungry. All he had to do was to reach out and eat part of his hay-bed in which he had slept. I think that was rather funny. It isn’t every one who can get a breakfast as easily as that.

How would you like to reach out in the morning, when you wake up, and eat part of the pillow case, a bit of the sheet and perhaps nibble off one of the rosettes on the bedquilt? I guess it would not taste as good as your breakfast orange and oatmeal; would it? No indeed!

But a rabbit is different. They like hay, and they can sleep in it as well as eat it. So Flop Ear had no trouble getting his breakfast. And he knew that in the woods and fields all around him grew many other things he could eat.

“So, even though I am lost, I shall not go hungry,” thought Flop Ear. “But still I don’t want to be lost. I want to find my home, my father and my mother, and Snuggle and Pink Nose. I want to see my grandma, Lady Munch, too. Oh, how I wish that hunter man had never come to our woods!”

But there was no use wishing that now. Flop Ear was far away from home, and he must do the best he could either to find his way back to it, or to look for a new home.

“It is Summer now,” thought the little rabbit, “and it will be all right to sleep out in the fields or woods without going down into an underground burrow. But if I do not find my home before cold weather comes I shall have to dig a new one for myself. I wonder if I have forgotten how to dig, or burrow, as father calls it. I guess I’ll go out and try it now.”

Out from the warm little nest he had made for himself in the hay came Flop Ear. He found a soft place in the field and began to dig in the dirt, pawing it under him in a pile by scratching with his fore paws, almost as your dog does it when he feels like digging.

“I haven’t forgotten my digging lessons,” said Flop Ear. “So I will be all right when Winter comes. But it is a long way off yet. Now to try again to find my home.”

He had just left the spot where he had dug the little hole in the meadow, when, all at once, he heard a dog barking.

“Ha! I wonder if that is Don or a hunter’s dog,” thought Flop Ear. He looked quickly over his shoulder, and he saw a dog running toward him. It was neither Don nor a hunter’s dog, but a strange one.

“Get out of this field!” barked the dog. “Run away or I’ll bite you!” and he spoke very crossly.

“My! You are not as nice and polite as Don was when he let me get the cabbage,” thought Flop Ear as he bounded away. “I’m not hurting your field. I only dug a little hole in it, and ate some hay, and there is a whole mountain of it left.” Flop Ear did not stop to say this to the barking dog, but spoke as he ran on, for the dog was coming after him very fast indeed.

“Bow wow! Bow wow!” barked the dog. “I’ll catch you, rabbit!”

“Oh, ho! No, you won’t!” answered Flop Ear. “You can’t catch me!”

Rabbits can run and hop very fast you know, but of course Flop Ear was only a little fellow, not fully grown, and the dog was a big chap. So the rabbit, looking back, saw that the dog was getting nearer and nearer.

“I must fool him,” said Flop Ear to himself. “I must run in the woods where he can not see me. Then he can only follow me by smelling, and when I get a chance I’ll cross some water, and then the dog can’t even smell my steps.”

When dogs can not see rabbits, or other animals they are chasing, they have to go by smell. They put their nose to the ground and sniff very hard, and a dog’s nose is so good for smelling that he can tell just which way a rabbit went, that is if it is not too long after the rabbit has passed by. Rabbits, and other animals when they step on the ground, leave there a sort of smell, called a scent, just as if you rubbed onion on a dish. Though you did not see the onion rubbed on the dish, if you smelled the dish, even in the dark, you would know the onion had been there.

That’s the way it is when a dog chases a rabbit. He smells the tracks on the ground when he can not see the bunny running along.

Pretty soon Flop Ear came to the woods. In among the bushes he jumped, and now he was hidden from the dog.

“Oh, but I’ll get you anyhow,” barked the dog. “I’ll smell you out with my sharp nose.”

“No, you won’t,” thought Flop Ear, for he did not want to talk to the dog now, or the cross animal might find the little white rabbit.

On and on ran Flop Ear, as fast as he could go. The dog still came after him, for every time Flop Ear’s feet touched the ground they left a smell there which the dog could follow.

But, pretty soon, Flop Ear came to a brook running through the woods.

“Now here’s where I fool that dog,” thought the rabbit. So Flop Ear went close to the edge of the water, jumped in where it was not very deep, and waded down stream, going as fast as he could, splashing drops all over. But he did not mind that, as the day was warm.

Besides it was better to be wet than to have a dog bite him.

After going down the brook quite a distance Flop Ear went all the way across it, to the other side, and then he felt that he need not hurry so.

“The dog can not smell where I am now,” he said to himself.

And this was true. Barking and growling, the dog came to the edge of the brook where Flop Ear had waded into the water, but the rabbit was out of sight. Then the dog had to stop for a minute.

“Now which way did that rabbit go?” he asked himself, for you see the smell of rabbits’ feet, or those of other animals, will not stay on the water. That was where the dog was puzzled.

“I guess the rabbit jumped across the brook, and is in the woods on the other side,” said the dog. “I’ll go over there myself.”

So across the water went the dog, but when he got on the other side he could neither see Flop Ear nor smell where he was. For the rabbit was quite a way down the stream you see. The dog ran all around, trying to get track of the rabbit smell, but he could not.

“He got away from me after all!” said the dog. “I call that a mean trick!”

But for Flop Ear it was a good trick. He did not want to be bitten, any more than that dog would like to get a nip. So Flop Ear got himself out of one danger.

“My! That was a long run!” said Flop Ear, as he came to a rest on a bed of soft moss. “I thought that dog would surely get me.” He listened very hard, but he could not hear the dog barking now. The dog had gone back to his home in the farmhouse, near the big pile of hay.

Flop Ear was hungry again now; so, after resting, he looked about and found some sweet bark from a tree. He ate as much of this as he wanted, taking a little sassafras bark as a sort of dessert――as you take pudding or pie――and then he hopped on again, still looking for his lost home.

All that day Flop Ear wandered about in the woods. Then, as night was coming on, he looked for a place to sleep. He was wondering if he had better not go back to the pile of hay, when, all at once he saw another rabbit just ahead of him.

“Oh, if that is only one of my folks!” thought Flop Ear, his heart beating very fast, “how happy I shall be! Hello there!” he called to the other bunny.

“Hello!” came back the answer, and then Flop Ear’s heart was sad, for the voice was not that of any of his relatives――not Lady Munch’s, his father’s, mother’s, Pink Nose’s, or Snuggle’s.

“Do you live around here?” asked Flop Ear of the strange rabbit.

“Yes,” was the answer. “My burrow is right under the place where you are sitting, and my front door is near this rock where I am.”

“Oh dear! I wish I were as near _my_ home as you are to _yours_,” said Flop Ear.

“What’s the matter?” asked the other rabbit, whose name was Fluffo.

“Oh, I’m lost!” Flop Ear said. “A hunter chased me away from my nice home.”

“Then come and stay with me,” suggested Fluffo. “I have plenty of room, and there are some nice carrots and cabbages in my burrow.”

“How good that sounds,” Flop Ear said. “I will come in and stay with you.”

So down into the other bunny’s burrow he went, and had a good supper, staying there all night. He had a good breakfast, too, and then he started off through the woods again.

“Why don’t you stay longer with me?” asked Fluffo. “I have plenty of room for both of us.”

“Oh, I would like to stay,” Flop Ear said, “but I feel that I must try to get back to my own dear home. My father and mother may be looking for me.”

“Well, go on then,” said Fluffo. “I hope you will find your burrow soon.”

“Thank you,” returned Flop Ear, “I hope I do.”

Away he hopped, over the fields and through the woods, and pretty soon he saw that the woods were coming to an end again. A large field was in front of Flop Ear, and in the field was a farmhouse, with barns and sheds.

“I wonder if I could get anything to eat over there,” thought Flop Ear, for he had not had anything since leaving Fluffo’s burrow, early that morning. “I guess I’ll hop over and see,” went on the rabbit. “I hope there are no dogs to chase me.”

Flop Ear hopped across the field toward the farmhouse. Back of it was a little shed, and the door of this shed was open. In went Flop Ear, not knowing quite where he was going. He saw piles of wood in the shed, for this was the place where the farmer’s wife kept her wood for making fires. There were pieces of trees that had once grown in the forest.

“Well, here is some bark I can gnaw,” thought Flop Ear, “but it is not as nice and fresh as that which grows on the trees in the woods. I guess I’ll――”

And then Flop Ear stopped suddenly, for he heard some one coming into the woodshed.

“Oh, I hope that isn’t the hunter man!” thought the rabbit. “I’d better hide.”

In front of him was a basket filled with wood. There was room down in among the sticks of wood for Flop Ear to hide. Into the basket he jumped, and cuddled down out of sight. Then Flop Ear heard a woman calling:

“Jimmie! Jimmie! Bring me in a basket of wood, please!”

“I will, Mother,” answered a boy.

Flop Ear could understand some of our kind of talk, you know, though he could not speak it himself.

The rabbit heard some one walking around the shed, and then, all at once, Flop Ear felt himself being lifted up in the basket of wood, and being carried along.

“Oh, I wonder what is going to happen to me now?” thought the rabbit, whose heart was beating very fast, as he was much frightened.

“Are you bringing the wood, Jimmie?” the boy’s mother called.

“Yes’m, I’m coming with it.”

There was something else in the basket besides the wood, had the boy only known it.

Flop Ear felt himself bouncing along, up and down, as the boy carried him in the wood basket, and then he felt the basket being set down.

“Take out the wood, Jimmie dear, and put it in the wood-box behind the stove,” said the woman, and the boy did so. Stick after stick he lifted out, and Flop Ear, who was down in the very bottom, was wondering what would happen when the basket was empty.

“They’ll see me, surely, then,” said the rabbit. “I wonder what they will do to me? Oh, I seem to be getting in more and more trouble all the while.”

The boy who was lifting the wood out of the basket suddenly cried:

“Oh, Mother! Look here! A rabbit!”

“A rabbit! Where?”

“In the wood basket!” And before Flop Ear could hop out of the way the boy had lifted him up in his arms, holding him closely.