“Champ? The dog? Please?” his dad said, less nicely this time.
“Almost there, honey,” Sally added.
Carl wasn’t a big fan of champ, but he really did not like being called honey. This was a relatively new and strongly held opinion that had taken hold of him since he’d turned ten. Double digits have a way of changing a person’s outlook on such matters. He hadn’t worked up the nerve to tell his mom yet, but that day was coming, and soon.
Not that his name was such a masterpiece. He was named after Carlsbad Caverns, a park full of caves that his parents had liked to visit before he was born. It was hard for him to imagine Brad and Sally exploring caves. He’d seen them carry a stroller down the subway steps lots of times, though.
“Carlsbad!”
“Okay, Dad! Come on, girl, sit.” Carl pushed Foxy’s rump down onto the seat and rubbed her belly to keep her occupied. Naming your firstborn child after a cave was bad, but calling a dog Foxy was just inaccurate. A dog is a dog; a fox is a fox. Case closed, as his dad liked to say.
Nope, nope, nope. Picking names was not a thing his parents were good at.
Neither, it seemed, was picking places to live.
“Prune Street?” he blurted as the car turned down an even narrower and less inhabited road than the one they’d been on. “You’re kidding, right?”
“Not kidding.” His dad sounded weary, like he needed a supersized cola to perk him up. “Eleven Prune Street is where we’re going.”
“Is that our new address?”
“Yes.”
“Prunes are very tasty,” Sally added.
“Your statement is false,” Carl said in his robot voice. Prunes were what happened when plums were left out to go bad. Carl had known this ever since Sally became obsessed with her dehydrator. The dehydrator was a thing that took perfectly good fruit and made it rubbery and hard to eat. Sally had paid actual money for this contraption and loved it like a sister, or so it seemed. When the holidays came, she filled approximately one billion glass jars with ruined fruit and gave them as gifts. It was a wonder anyone was still speaking to her.
Eleven Prune Street! Carl slumped as far as the seat belt would let him. Their old address was normal: 1260 Oxford Street, Apartment 5F, Brooklyn, New York. It was one block from the subway that could take you anywhere, even to the beach, plus the bus stopped right on the avenue if you didn’t feel like taking the train.
School was a ten-minute walk from home, and the big park with the lake and the carousel was a twelve-minute walk. Most of his friends lived nearby, and Frank’s Market was right downstairs. It was so close that he used to be allowed to go there by himself to buy his favorite treat. Captain Skeeter’s Crunch Nuggets! Now, there was a candy bar.
Of course, that was before the dehydrator arrived and the henceforth rule went into effect. No more Crunch Nuggets for Carl. Now his mom just gave him dried-out rubbery fruit when he wanted something sweet. Or carrot sticks. Carrot sticks! The indignity!
Sally peeked into the back seat. “Imagine how much Foxy is going to like living in the country!” she said, much too cheerfully. “Maybe she’ll learn to chase rabbits.”
His dad snorted. “That dog wouldn’t know what to do with a live rabbit if she saw one.”
“Woof,” Foxy said, not bothering to open her eyes.
“Don’t make fun of Foxy,” Carl said rudely. He’d just realized the nearest bar of Captain Skeeter’s Crunch Nuggets was three hours away, in Brooklyn, and he wasn’t going back there anytime soon. “She didn’t ask to move. You’re forcing her.”
That made his parents settle down. But Carl felt bad that they didn’t scold him about being rude. That’s how he knew that moving to the country was a real catastrophe: from the way his parents had almost completely stopped scolding him, even when he was angling for it.
It wasn’t one hundred percent fair to blame them, either, since the move was fifty percent his fault. Here’s how he figured it: Last summer he’d gone to sleepaway camp for the first time. He’d begged and begged, because his best friend, Emmanuel, was going and had done a powerful sales job about how fun the place was, all pocketknives and swimming holes and secret handshakes. The camp was upstate, in a woodsy kind of place that looked a lot like the last hour of the drive to Prune Street.
After doing their “due diligence,” which was a mysterious ceremony the Harvey parents always performed before making a decision, they said yes. Carl was thrilled. He’d driven up with Emmanuel’s family, who seemed to handle the change of scenery just fine. But when Brad and Sally arrived at the end of two weeks to pick up the boys, they took one look at the trees and, blammo. It was like they’d been hypnotized. They couldn’t stop talking about how beautiful it was, how lovely to be in nature, how nice it was to be away from the city, which was so dirty and smelly and crowded.
What a tragic mistake he’d made, and all because he wanted to learn to shoot a bow and arrow! If Carl had never gone to camp, his parents wouldn’t have ever noticed how dirty and smelly the city was.
Carl had stopped rubbing Foxy’s belly somewhere along the way. Now she was up again, panting like a racehorse and fogging up the window with her breath. She looked excited and happy, but that’s dogs for you. Life is all chew toys and belly rubs as far as a dog’s concerned, even in the midst of disaster.
“You dumb dog,” Carl whispered, right into the dog’s neck, so no one could hear. “Our whole life is wrecked, and you don’t even know it.”
Foxy grinned like she’d just won a prize.
Carl made his most unhappy expression: He pushed out his lower lip; his mouth scrunched upward and his eyebrows glowered down, as if all his features were trying to reach the middle of his face. He would have liked it if just one living creature would admit what a horrible situation they were in.
His sister, Marie, snored in her car seat next to him. Marie was named after a famous scientist his parents admired. She’d recently turned one, and Carl still didn’t quite see the point of her. All she did was eat applesauce, mess her diaper, and prattle in baby talk that no reasonable person could understand, although Brad and Sally always pretended that they could.
“Looks like the moving truck beat us here.” Brad turned the steering wheel all the way to the right and pulled over on the side of the road, since the driveway was occupied.
Sally unbuckled her seat belt and twisted around to face Carl with a goofy smile on her face. “That’s it, honey. The big red house!”
Carl craned his neck to see past the moving truck.
“That’s our house? All of it?” he asked, disbelieving. You could fit four whole apartments into a house that size.
“It’s not just a house. It’s a farm.” Brad unlocked the car doors, ka-chunk, and let out a long, satisfied breath. “Come on, champ! The place is amazing. Wait until you see it.”
CHAPTER THREE
The cottontails gather and decide.
The warren held a meeting that very night; Lester made sure of it—but only Lester, Alice, and her siblings knew what it was going to be about.
The last warren meeting had been a few days after Alice was born, and its purpose was deciding how to share a patch of wild winter crocus that had been discovered on the far side of the creek. Being a tiny, hairless, and helpless thing at the time, as all newborn rabbits are, she’d had to send her regrets.
There hadn’t been a meeting since, but that’s cottontails for you. Some types of rabbits live in busy underground towns with lots of rules about who’s in charge and who isn’t, who gives the orders and who does what they’re told. That’s natural for those rabbits, but it’s not the cottontail way.
Cottontails are more like Quakers, if you know anything about Quakers. They’re peaceable by nature, hold a wide range of opinions, and mind their own business as much as seems prudent. There isn’t any one rabbit or group of rabbits in charge. If there’s something to decide or discuss, they gather together and sit, quietly, to think about what
ever the problem is.
Being still and quiet takes practice, as rabbits are skittish by nature and ready to bolt over the slightest thing. However, if most of the warren manages to stay calm enough and quiet enough long enough, sooner or later, the right thing to do becomes clear to everyone.
It’s a slow-paced system, no question, but it works for cottontails. Most creatures could probably do with less talk and tussle about who’s right and what’s wrong, and more time spent in quiet, companionable rumination. That’s just an opinion, of course, and as any wise old rabbit could tell you: Opinions are common as chickweed, but not nearly so easy to yank up by the roots.
It took time for the cottontails to gather. All that fresh spring grass after a winter diet of twigs and tree bark made them want to stay out and graze until it was good and dark. Cottontails are crepuscular feeders, which means they prefer to eat at twilight, in the half-lit hours near sunrise and sunset. For that dim little while, when the day predators are changing shifts with the night predators, the world is as safe as it gets, for a rabbit.
Soon enough the sun was down and the stars were peeping through the purple sky. Once the owls woke up and started to whoo-whoo back and forth with breakfast invitations, the cottontails had had enough, and they scurried underground for the meeting.
They called their home Burrow, since that’s what it was: an abandoned groundhog’s burrow the rabbits had taken over. Groundhogs are powerful diggers and much larger than cottontails, so the tunnels of Burrow were spacious. The two longest tunnels led to a large den, big enough for a whole fluffle of rabbits to gather. It was pitch-dark down there, but smell and hearing are more important than sight to a rabbit anyway.
The cottontails arrived in ones and twos, and the den began to fill. Alice and her littermates huddled together, teeth chattering with excitement.
“What a discovery we made today!” Thistle said quietly, to Alice. “What do you suppose will happen when Lester tells everybody about the—you-know-whats?”
“We’ll find out soon enough. I just hope…” What did she hope? She thought for a minute. “I hope we get to a chance see them.”
Thistle’s body tensed, for he’d learned his lessons well. “See them? But what if they’re deadly, like the other one was? He was a real villain!”
“From a distance, I mean,” said Alice, to calm him. Not all rabbits are curious, but after one trip to the meadow, Alice was discovering that she was.
Marigold tipped her nose up and sniffed. “I think our mother’s here,” she said. This fact was of only mild interest to the kits. Their mother was with the other does. She’d recently had another litter, but they were still in the nest. Cottontail mothers don’t trouble themselves about babysitters. They just cover the nest with leaves and grass and go about their business, stopping by twice a day to feed whatever little ones remain. This might sound neglectful, but baby cottontails only stay in the nest for two weeks anyway. After that they’re on their own.
Lester was there, too, of course, and an older doe named Violet who was nearly as old as Lester. She was missing an ear tip due to a long-ago run-in with a trap. That she’d survived it at all lent her a battle-scarred air that commanded respect. When Violet spoke, everyone listened.
The press of warm bodies underground grew until the den could hold no more. One rabbit thumped a hind foot, as a way of saying, “Let’s get started!” Others did the same, and the vibration of all those thumping feet rumbled through the earth. It made Alice’s belly tighten and her ears tingle. Something important was about to happen.
Lester combed his whiskers three times with his front paws and gave his ears a shaking out. Then he spoke.
“There are farmers again,” he said. “Farmers in the big red house.”
It was big news, no doubt about it. Muzzles twitched and fast-beating hearts beat faster, as the rabbits took it in.
“Same farmer?” asked Violet.
“New ones,” Lester replied.
“Did you see them?”
“Nope. We saw their things, though, going into the house. Judging from what I saw, I’d say it’s a breeding pair, plus a kit or two. Maybe a small litter. Ha ha!”
All those pressed-together bunny bodies shook with silent laughter. A litter of baby farmers! That was about the ugliest, most hilarious thing any of them could imagine.
“Any cats?” someone asked when the laughter faded.
Cats were no friends to rabbits, but most house cats were overfed to the point of never being hungry at all. They’d chase rabbits for fun but without ambition, and would give up as soon as they grew bored, or were summoned by the mesmerizing whir of a can opener. The real danger posed by cats was their hypnotic, predatory stare. Humans will sometimes say “I nearly died of fright” as a way of being dramatic, but rabbits truly can die of fright, and plenty have been known to expire just from staring too long at a cat.
“Cat status, unknown,” Lester replied.
“Dogs?” Violet asked, as calmly as any rabbit could.
“Unknown at this time. That’s my report.” Lester drew back, satisfied.
Now it was time to stay quiet and think.
“Dang dogs,” one of the bucks remarked, interrupting the silence. The very notion of dogs was enough to put the whole warren on edge. Soon, more rabbits broke the quiet.
“Burrow is too close to the farmhouse,” one rabbit said.
“Too close, yes! Too close!” others repeated.
“We could leave, maybe?” another rabbit suggested.
“Leave!” Lester flattened his ears. “Because of farmers? This is not bad news, friends. Why, it’s a golden opportunity.”
“To get caught in a trap, you mean,” young Berry exclaimed. Very likely he was still thinking of that crib, but to cry “trap” in a crowded burrow was poor manners. A few older rabbits growled at the kit, to teach him a lesson. The one nearest to him swiped him with a paw.
“Rabbitfolk don’t live long,” Violet said sternly, beginning a familiar saying.
“But we can still be careful,” Berry finished, contrite. All two-week-old kits were taught that old chestnut on the day they left the nest. “Sorry, everyone,” he added.
“Apology accepted, youngster. You’re not thinking straight, but that’s because you’ve never feasted on a garden full of broccoli. Why, it’s dee-lectable!” Lester often talked like the magazine advertisements he’d once eaten. “You kits don’t know what you’re missing. I bet you don’t know the difference between cauliflower and clover.”
“We’ve lived without a garden to raid for two springtimes already, two summers, two harvests,” one of the does observed. “What difference does broccoli make now?”
Lester’s whiskers quivered in outrage. “Have you no cottontail pride? These young ’uns have never so much as tasted a radish! Where’s the meaning in a life so deprived? And Swiss chard! Oh my!”
“I like my life just fine so far, even without radishes,” Marigold primly declared.
“Tsk, tsk.” Lester shook his head. “A cottontail with no love for vegetables.” But he didn’t go on about it. There was no need. He’d made his point, and the others had made theirs. Now it was time to think.
“Let’s be quiet,” Violet said, a gentle reminder. The rabbits settled down, jaws grinding like tiny motors to help them concentrate. The grinding went on for a long time. At the end of it, Violet spoke again.
“Here’s what the ground tells me. Some of us long for radishes, and some of us are content without. But even those who don’t care about vegetables care about a dang dog. On this we all agree,” she concluded. “A dang dog will be trouble for all of us.”
“No doubt, no doubt.”
The warm thrum of agreement ran through the rabbits’ pressed-together bodies, flank to flank. A dog on the farm would be a problem indeed.
“If there is a dang dog, the radishes won’t matter,” one cottontail said, after a bit. “We’d never be able to raid the garden anyway.
”
“Cowards,” Lester muttered, not unkindly.
Others chimed in with suggestions:
“If there is a dang dog, we shouldn’t let the kits out of the woods.”
“If there is a dang dog, none of us should set a paw in the meadow, ever again!”
“If there is a dang dog, we ought to move away from the farmhouse altogether.”
Alice was young, and it was her first warren meeting, but she knew she had as much right to speak as anyone. She’d been listening hard—listening with both ears, as the rabbitfolk say. Now she decided to speak.
“It seems to me,” she said, in a clear, high voice, “that we ought to find out if there’s a dog at all, before making rules and jumping to conclusions and so forth.”
“I agree!” Thistle chimed in, to no one’s surprise. Thistle idolized his sister, who’d always been kind to him, despite him being half the size of the rest of his litter. Most runts wouldn’t have made it to three months, but Alice had kept an eye on him, making sure he got his chance to graze and teaching him how to zigzag properly, even though his hops were so much shorter than the others’.
“I’m with Alice, too. Good thinking from the youngster,” Lester said firmly.
“Quiet,” Violet repeated, but she hardly had to say it. The rabbits fell silent again, brains whirring, jaws grinding.
“On this we all agree,” Violet said at last. “Someone should go find out if there’s a dang dog or not.”
But she didn’t say how it should be done, or who should be the one to do it. Cottontails would never presume in that way.
Alice felt the quiet, quick breathing all around her, the hum of rabbit bodies with their tiny hearts beating fast. It was dark down here in Burrow, cozy and safe, with so many of her own kind close by. There was barely enough room to turn around.
But the memory of the morning’s adventure in the meadow was fresh in her nose and whiskers, too, the grassy, sun-bright, wide-open joy of it. And that was only the meadow’s middle! What would it be like to go all the way across?
Alice's Farm Page 2