How Rabbit deceived Fox

How Rabbit deceived Fox

Long ago, in a great Canadian forest, Rabbit was known for both his quick feet and his clever tricks. He found paths where others saw only thickets and slipped out of the tightest corners. But he had one bad habit: the sight of someone else’s vegetables sometimes made him forget to ask permission.

An elderly woman lived nearby. From morning until evening, she tended her little garden of cabbages, carrots, beans, pumpkins, and maize. She kept some of the harvest and traded the rest for other food.

One morning she noticed that several heads of cabbage were missing. The next morning the carrots disappeared. Then someone gnawed the beans and trampled the leaves near the pumpkins.

“Someone visits my garden at night,” the woman said. “I must find out who.”

For several evenings, she watched from her window, but the visitor moved too quietly. At last, she devised a trap: a little figure made of sticky spruce and fir resin, with shining beads for eyes, a pinecone nose, and hair of corn silk and yellow moss. She set it at the garden entrance.

That night the moon rose, a thin fog lay over the ground, and Rabbit, as always, crept silently up to the beds.

Suddenly he saw a dark figure near the gate.

Rabbit froze.

“Hey!” he called. “Move out of the way!”

The figure was silent.

Rabbit came closer.

“I’m talking to you!”

No movement, no sound.

Rabbit plucked up courage and touched the figure with his paw. The paw stuck right away.

“Well, now!”

He braced his other paw against the figure to pull free, but it stuck too. Then a foot sank into the resin. Soon Rabbit scarcely knew how to move without becoming more firmly trapped.

Hearing his cries, the woman ran outside.

“So you’re the one taking my vegetables!” she exclaimed.

She carefully unstuck Rabbit from the resin figure, put him in a strong bag and tied it with a rope.

“You’ll sit here until I decide what to do with you. You won’t want to steal other people’s things anymore.”

The woman went to the house, and Rabbit remained in the bag by the gate.

Soon Fox ran along the path. In the darkness, she didn’t notice the bag, tripped over it and asked angrily:

“Who’s there?”

“It’s me, Rabbit,” a familiar voice answered.

“And why did you climb into the bag?”

Rabbit instantly understood that this was his chance.

“They’ve made me stay here for a grand feast,” he sighed. “The woman says she’ll give me her finest dishes tomorrow morning in return for some help around the house. But I don’t want to wait. I have so much to do.”

Fox pricked up her ears.

“The best dishes, you say?”

“That’s right. And she also promised a full basket of goodies for the road.”

Fox was hungry and immediately forgot about caution.

“Then let’s switch places. I’ll wait instead of you.”

“Well, if you insist…” Rabbit agreed, pretending to be reluctant.

Fox untied the bag, Rabbit jumped out, and she climbed inside herself. Rabbit quickly tied the rope and rushed into the forest.

Before long, the woman returned. She untied the sack, ready for a serious talk with Rabbit. Instead, Fox shot out like lightning.

“Hey! Who are you?” was all the woman had time to shout.

Fox did not answer. She rushed away, already understanding perfectly well who had deceived her.

“Well, Rabbit,” she muttered, “next time I will not believe a word you say!”

But next time it happened differently.

That evening, Fox finally spotted Rabbit on the far bank of a shallow stream. A round yellow moon hung above the forest, its reflection trembling on the water.

“Come over here!” called Fox.

“I can’t, I’m having dinner,” answered Rabbit.

“What are you having?”

Rabbit looked at the moon’s reflection and said:

“Cheese. A big round cheese. There it is, right in the water.”

Fox looked down and really saw a yellow circle.

“What a cheese!” she cried happily, leaping into the stream.

The water was shallow, so nothing terrible happened. But Fox got her paws, tail, and belly wet, and the round “cheese” crumbled into silver waves with each splash.

On the other bank, Rabbit was already disappearing among the bushes.

“Again!” Fox cried indignantly. “He has tricked me again!”

A few days later they met again. Rabbit was munching something in the dark.

“What are you eating?” asked Fox.

“A delicious wild fruit,” he answered and rolled her a round prickly cucumber.

“And how do you eat it?”

“Carefully, in little bites,” Rabbit almost replied. But the trickster in him won. “Oh, you can eat it all at once!”

Fox hurried to bite the fruit and immediately coughed from the prickly skin.

“Pah! My tongue is prickling!”

She spat out the cucumber, drank water, and grew angrier still. Rabbit had vanished without a trace.

The day passed. Towards evening the forest became quiet, the sky in the west turned red, and Rabbit sat down on a log to play the pipe. The melody was ringing and cheerful.

Suddenly Fox appeared between the trees.

This time she decided not to listen to any of the stories. But Rabbit played even louder and exclaimed:

“Just in time! A grand party is supposed to come along this path. I’ve been asked to welcome them with music. Would you like to play too?”

Fox loved everything that promised a treat or a reward.

“And do you have a second pipe?”

“Take mine. I’ll run and fetch a spare.”

Fox sat down on a log and began to pipe diligently. And Rabbit hid behind the bushes.

Dry leaves lay nearby. Rabbit decided on one last fright. Some distance away, he lit a small heap of brushwood, letting the smoke drift towards the path while leaving the way clear.

Fox played so loudly that at first she didn’t notice anything. But when she smelled smoke, she looked back, saw an orange flicker, and in an instant jumped out onto the safe path.

The tips of her dark fur were lightly singed, taking on a warm reddish-brown colour. She was unhurt, but badly frightened.

Then she finally understood: the competition in cunning had gone too far.

“Enough,” she said to herself. “I will no longer chase after Rabbit and will not believe the first promise I hear.”

And Rabbit, watching from afar, also began to think. His antics became more dangerous each time, and it all started with a simple desire to feast on someone else’s vegetables.

Since then, Rabbit and Fox have each followed their own paths. And in an old tale they say that it was after that adventure that the fox’s fur became reddish-brown.

When a clear night’s moon makes a yellow circle in a stream, remember Fox and her “cheese,” and look carefully before leaping.

May this story leave a little light in your heart ✨