Mostly About Nibble the Bunny

The air was blowing in at the mouth of his hole when Little Nibble Rabbit opened his eyes. That meant a cold south wind outside, a rainy wind. He could see the wet drops hanging from the top of his arched earth doorway. They would wet his back when he tried to go out and that wouldn’t be nice. He shivered and closed his eyes again. Then he huddled up tighter than ever into a little furry brown ball. Still he was cold, so he tried to cuddle into the very farthest corner where his mother always slept. It was empty!

That woke him up. “Mammy,” he called softly; “Mammy.” No answer. He put his nose to the earth and found it still warm. She could not have been gone very long. So he crawled to the mouth of the hole and thumped with his little hind feet, making all the noise he dared. Then he sat up and cocked his ears for her answering thump. He half expected a glimpse of her white tail bobbing down one of the tunnels through the Prickly Ash Thicket. But no mother was there.

“She can’t go off and leave me like this,” he said to himself, and he put down his nose to find her trail. It was all washed out by the rain. Thump, thump! he went again—and they were cross thumps because he was so terribly disappointed. Then he suddenly sat down on his little tufty tail and wailed “Mammy, mammy, mammy!” at the top of his voice.

“Cheer up, Bunny. What’s wrong,” chirped some one from a branch just over his head. It was Bobby Robin, and he was peering down with the most puzzled and astonished look in his black eye.

“I’m Nibble,” sobbed the little rabbit, “and I’ve lost my mother.”

“Well, Nibble,” warned Bobby in his sensible way, “if she doesn’t come back pretty soon she’ll lose her son. Don’t you know better than to tell Killer Weasel and Silvertip the Fox, and Hooter the Owl, and any one else who wants to know where they’ll find a nice young rabbit for breakfast.”

But the tears ran faster than ever down Nibble’s whiskers. “It’s Hooter,” he sniffed. “He caught her when she went down to the brook for a drink. I know he did. She’d never leave me.”

“Nonsense,” said Bobby, and he said it peckishly, for no one likes to hear a little rabbit cry. “I know your mother, and she knows the law of the woods. You can fly—run, I mean—can’t you. And feed yourself?”

“Yes,” answered Nibble, for his brothers and sisters had gone to dig their own holes and find their own food weeks ago.

“Well, then,” finished Bobby, nodding wisely to himself, “if there’s any fresh rabbit fur under Hooter’s tree it’s not your mother’s.”

To his surprise Nibble stopped squeezing the tears from his eyes and opened them wide. “I’m going to look!” he announced. And he began to scrub his face and polish off his ears with his little soft forepaws.

“Going to look where?” asked Bobby Robin.

“Oh, lots of places—the Clover Patch, and the Brush Pile, and the Broad Field. But first I’m going to see if there’s any fur under Hooter’s tree.”

“What?” squawked Bobby. He came tumbling down to the ground where he could make Nibble look him straight in the eye and listen to an awful lecture.