“Hey, if you were hunting Ms. Bunny and it´s true what I heard about Ms. Bunny´s sleep-eating that means I´m the winner,” said a joyful Ms. Frog.
“Well, yes, Ms. Bunny has been eating her greens all along but I wasn´t hunting Ms. Bunny, I was trying to make her realise what she was doing. Technically you can only be the winner if you kill one of us and eat us,” reasoned Ms. Fox.
Ms. Frog pulled a disgusted face. “Maybe the rat was right, I should leave killing to the professionals.”
Ms. Fox climbed out of the hole lifting Ms. Bunny out by the back of her neck. The hole was ridiculously small. Any animal, even a small rat could easily have got out of it.
“Great,” said the fox, “that means I´m the real winner because I´m the only one that managed to only eat vegetables and fruit in all this time. Where´s my prize?”
“There is no prize, it was just an experiment,” said Ms. Frog.
But Ms. Fox wasn´t listening to Ms. Frog´s jibber jabber. She was too busy tucking into a hen that just happened to be tied to the tree in front of the hole.
“My you are a star, this is my favourite meat, thank you so much.” said a contented fox.
Ms. Frog hugged Ms. bunny who was shaking in her enormous boots at the sight of such violence. She never really trusted Ms. Fox and was amazed she was still alive.
“Come on Ms. Bunny, I think it´s time for tea and lettuce sandwiches. You can stay in my home tonight, I think you are still in shock,” comforted Ms. Frog.
Off they bounced together. Ms. Frog stopped now and again to catch a random fly for lunch.
Ms. fox looked up after them and smiled.”What a nice pair of friends,” she thought, “and what a great feast they´ve given me. I´ll see to it that no fox ever eats them or their families.”
I wonder if she kept her promise.
What do you think?
The End
Then one day Ms. Frog got an idea while standing by the river watching some fishermen. Their bodies were not really equipped for catching fish but they were using a worm on a hook to lure the fish into a trap. Their tools caught the fish for them.
“How clever,” thought Ms. Frog.
That is how she got the plan to build a trap. She dug a hole in the ground with the help of some mice and covered it with leaves and twigs. Then she jumped to the nearest farm and lured a stupid hen to the hole with a worm. Now when I saw what she did next I just thought the hunger had made her crazy, but now I know it was a mixture of pride and greed that made her tie the hen to a nearby tree and wait for bigger prey. If I had been her I would simply have tried eating the hen.
It was well into week two now and their tempers and behaviour was getting quite edgy. Of course Ms. Bunny´s nocturnal visits to the vegetable gardens were more frequent than ever and unknown to herself she was eating all the plants around her. She looked healthy and fat but a little tired.
Ms. Fox was also visiting vegetable gardens and while she had laughed at Ms. Bunny´s sleep-eating before, now it irritated her.
“I´m going to give that rabbit a good fright. I´m going to wake her up and show her what´s what,” she whispered bitterly.
She crept over and placed a red paw one the rabbit´s grey shoulder. Ms. Bunny almost choked on a bit of carrot when she opened her eyes and saw the fox grinning at her. Ms. Fox licked her lips. Ms. Bunny pissed on the cabbages.
“Got you,” barked the fox.
Ms. Bunny jumped out of Ms. Fox´s grasp. “Hey wait,” roared Ms. fox. The rabbit ran, the fox ran after her. The chase felt good. Ms. Fox nearly forgot it was her friend Ms. Bunny she was chasing and not some other random small animal. She had to stop herself from going into hunting mode.
They ran and ran and they ran straight into Ms. Frog´s trap.
“Hurray, Yippee!” shouted the frog. She bounded over and looked into the hole.
“But…it´s….YOU TWO!” shouted the disappointed frog.
“It´s not what it looks like,” said the fox while trying to comfort a distraught bunny and convince her she wasn´t dinner.
The first week was a pure nightmare and I, the narrator am surprised that none of them gave up. Each of them was prouder than the other and I suppose that is what maintained it.
Ms. Bunny thought she had got the best deal until she got a bad case of the runs. I guess it was due to the fact that she wasn´t used to only eating insects and her body flushed out the overdose of proteins. She dreamed of carrots at night and sometimes she even woke up with a lettuce leaf sticking out of her mouth. She must have been sleepwalking and sleep-eating by the look of things. She didn´t tell the others this.
Ms. Fox was in agony. Strawberries gave her some satisfaction as the colour of them reminded her of meat but the sweetness turned her stomach. She was hungry all the time. Being nocturnal she couldn´t break the habit of eating at night so she would creep into the farmer´s vegetable fields at night and try to fill her tummy. She was surprised once or twice to see Ms. Bunny there too, nibbling away on something green. She often mocked her for her lack of willpower. Ms. Bunny just ignored her.
Then one night in the vegetable patch Ms. Fox realised, after mocking Ms. Bunny that she ignored her because she was asleep. It dawned on her that she could easily have eaten Ms. Bunny right then and there, but she wasn´t in the habit of eating little animals she was on friendly terms with. She liked Ms. Bunny´s silliness.
The start of the second week was worse than the first. Ms. Fox got the runs too. Her body never ever had to try and digest so much fruit and so many vegetables. She was still hungry. Meanwhile Ms. Frog was wasting away. Hers was the most difficult task. She didn´t get the runs because she just didn´t eat. At first she had thought she had the easiest task. Catching flies couldn´t be more difficult than catching small animals. She started with small vermin such as shrews and mice. She would jump near them wait and then throw her tongue at them, trying to drag them towards her mouth. The response was humiliating.
“Hey, stop licking me!” yelled one shrew. “Get that slimy tongue of yours away!” shouted a mouse. They proved to be very contrary creatures.
She jumped on them and tried biting them with her toothless mouth. They just got annoyed and one or two even bit her rubbery legs.
“Leave murder to the professionals, even if you got classes from Ms. Fox you still couldn´t kill us.” said an old rat.
“Oh, they can feel alright. I read somewhere that some plants produce a mild toxin when humans touch them. It´s rubbish defence system because it´s pretty harmless but the tannin in tea leaves is an example.”said Ms. Fox in an effort to get science on her side.
She really hadn´t much of a clue of what she was on about but as the other two were afraid of her it didn´t matter. They wouldn´t believe her anyway so she could say what she liked.
“Oh, I like tea,” said Ms. Frog, “especially on a cold wintry night.”
Ms. Fox relaxed a bit, not only did they not believe her but it seemed they weren´t even listening.
“I just eat sheep and little animals for the same reason you eat flies and small insects, they give us the proteins our bodies need. Although I must admit I haven´t the foggiest idea why Ms. Bunny loves lettuce.” announced Ms. Fox.
“I have an idea,” said Ms. Frog. “It´s obvious that we don´t understand each other´s behaviour and because of this we don´t understand each other. So let´s put each other in the other one´s shoes and try to live like that”
“What?” asked Ms. Bunny
“Yeah, I didn´t get that either, Ms. Bunny,” said the fox.
“Swap shoes, swap behaviour,” said Ms. Frog.
“Alright, why not,” said Ms. Bunny, “although my shoes are curiously bigger than Ms. Fox´s feet, and way bigger than yours so I´m not sure how we´ll manage.”
“No, no it´s a metaphor,” cried Ms. Frog. “Wearing somebody´s shoes just means you understand how that being feels. We are not going to swap shoes really. Anyway I don´t like the smell of Ms. Fox´s feet.”
Ms. Fox raised an eyebrow. “I think the whole idea is ridiculous.”
Ms. Bunny just jumped around repeating the word “Metaphor, metaphor.”
“I think it´s just the experience we need.” said Ms. Frog “Ms. Fox, you must live on plants and vegetables. Ms. Bunny, you must live on flies and insects and I must kill animals that are bigger than myself.” said Ms. Frog confidently.
” Call me conservative, but I think this is a whole lot of horse excrement,” said Ms. Fox, “and it´s hardly fair, I think Ms. Bunny eats little insects anyway on leaves when she´s grazing. I´ve never seen her separate the insects from the leaves with her front paws.”
“I do so,” said the bouncing rabbit.
“Come on, I think we could manage it for two weeks,” proposed Ms. Frog.
“I think we´ll be dead in two weeks, so see you in heaven.” said Ms. Fox.
“Not likely, I´m going to bunny heaven, fox heaven is no place for me!” said Ms. Bunny in a wise tone.
“Stop your fooling and get hunting!” said Ms. Frog as she painted her face with the mud from the splashing river floor.
Ms. Frog and Ms. Bunny were huddled together having a great old chin wag about the various scandalous goings on in the forest.
“You don´t say…”
“She did what…?”
“Well I never…..”
were just some of the little comments you could hear over their callous whispers. They were just about to get into some juicy news about Ms. Hedgehog when out of nowhere crept Ms. Fox.
“Good day fellow woodland creatures.” barked the sly redhead.
“Good day.” answered Ms. Frog. “I hear you´ve been particularly busy these days. We heard some sheep in the district had disappeared. Had you anything to do with that?”
Ms. Fox shrugged her shoulders and played with the seam of her apron.
“Well I am carnivorous, I suppose you do know what that means.”
“Is it that you like stones and pebbles?” asked Ms. Bunny from behind a tree.
“No, I like meat Ms. Bunny and you´re lot, if I could catch them would make a fine meal.”
Ms. Bunny ran into the nearest burrow and peered out trembling. Ms. Frog stood her ground but she was overly confident as she knew that with one leap she would be safely in the river.
“Why are you so afraid of me?”complained the fox.
“You could eat me right now if you wanted, in fact you are a scourge to all my kind,” replied the shaking bunny.
“You eat flies Ms. Frog and you eat plants and vegetables Ms. Bunny, don´t you think they have feelings too!”
“I wasn´t aware they could feel anything,” said Ms. Bunny.