A Fable for the Modern Age

(Or What women seem to want these days).

Rosy Rabbit was a pretty young thing. Her fawn ears were soft and silky and her brown eyes were kind and tender. She was just a teenager and lived with her mother and father in a burrow in the barn meadow. Spring was coming along and Rosy's mother was just about to give birth, so Rosy had to leave her nice cosy home and find somewhere else to live.

She knew that two boy rabbits were interested in her, but she couldn't decide which one to choose. Jack Rabbit was quite a handsome lad with a sprightly hop and a pert way of sitting up straight in the field to see if the farm cats were about. Rory Rabbit, on the other hand, was a quiet, gentle, thoughtful rabbit who spent an awful lot of his time preeening his fur, washing his ears and generally keeping his burrow tidy. What to do? Which to choose?

Jack brought her an offering of sweet-smelling hay he had stolen from the farm barn. Rosy snuffled her nose into it and smelt the Summer - she was bowled over. Then Rory brought her a few new green leaves from the emerging cow parsley - her favourite. She savoured every mouthful and was again undecided. So she set them a task. Whoever made the nicest home for her would win. She stipulated that it be in the pasture, well away from where her Mum and Dad lived - she didn't want them interfering in her new life! She told them she would inspect the burrow next morning and make her decision.

Jack spent a lot of time watching out for the farm cats and left it rather late to start. The hedgerow bank has several nice terraced houses and he thought another along there would be just the thing. So he began to scratch and scrape away the soil and soon had a nice burrow - an end of terrace plot, so they only had neighbours on one side. He thought that would do, although next door on the other side there was rather a lot of rubbish - old sticks, the odd feather from where the sparrowhawk had eaten a pigeon earlier in the year, a pile of soil which he had removed from the burrow - well he would deal with those later.

Rory hopped up and down the pasture hedgerow bank. It was a nice, sheltered spot, caught the sun for most of the day, well-drained. He saw where Jack was getting his burrow ready and thought that perhaps it was a bit common to be "end of terrace" - and with all that rubbish.

Then he saw just the spot; well away from the rest of the burrows and what is more it had already got superb light-fittings over the front door. He carefully made the burrow, avoiding touching the beautiful lights, lined it with sweet-smelling hay - and as a final touch he got an acorn cup, filled it with dew and put in the first celandines of the Spring.

There was no contest. Rosy adores her light fittings, has already lined the bedroom area with soft pale grey fur and is now busy doing what rabbits do best.

(This photograph, taken this morning, shows wonderful fungus at the entrance to a rabbit hole - the rest is pure fiction.)