Black Rabbit and Mad Fox

In wildlife lore, there is no fable as widely known or famed as that of the Black Rabbit and Mad Fox. It is a tale that Mother Mice and Mother Deer recite to their children, who then tell it to their own, and then the grandchildren are told it; thus, the story is not lost. It is kept alive by being constantly spun, o’er and o’er, without a word of change, and this is that tale.

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It is a well known fact that rabbits are eaten by foxes; they are eaten by every animal, man, cat and even rat, that eats another animal, but it is the rusty wild dog that is the biggest danger to the quick brown fellow that lives underground.

All animals have beliefs, and not least in where they came from. A mole, for example, will say he was made from the dirt in which he lives, whereas a deer will tell it that it was made of branches and fungus. The hedgehog will say they sprouted from the teasel plant, but the rabbit will claim that they grew from somewhere else.

It is because of this that impossible for them to say though where the Black Rabbit came from; rabbit kittens and rabbit mothers will all say that they were shaped from a tuft of old grass and the cotton from a dandelion plant. A number will thus argue that the Black Rabbit sprouted from where another animal trampled over-ripe blackberries into the ground, whilst some will tell you that he was originally a cat that became his prey because he had killed a whole warren of rabbit babies. He was therefore doomed to be hunted as he had killed, and that it was his feline nature that made him a hero.

He was made black in this story so that the rest of rabbit folk would know that he was not one of them; they sent him away from their runs with kicks and claws and bites when he came to join them. He wanted to live in their community that tricked the badger, the weasel, the eagle, and above all, the fox. The sheer number of them fed those that ate them, but the rabbit folk survived nevertheless to re-populate the newly made world.

The Black Rabbit might not even have become such a contested character had he not become the hero his story. He was not wanted by the rest of rabbit kind because his colour told their enemies where they slept and ate and raised their children. He was sent away to live in the Wild Wood that was dying because it had given everything it had to make animal life; colour, texture, sound.

It was grey and cold place when the Black Rabbit crept in amongst the brambles tipped with frost. The soil was frozen hard and was the colour of ash as he wriggled between the thorns and nibbled at the equally grey leaves; they tasted of what man would later come to call cardboard. The story that the old rabbit will tell you will say that he spat out the terrible plant and scrabbled along the tunnelled paths that those who still lived in the Wild Wood had carved it.

The story states that as he hopped along a path a bramble finger caught the Black rabbit on the rump, but he wriggled free and moved on. He left a tuft of inky fur behind, however, as it was still attached to the wicked claws, and it was this that floated down as his enemy walked by.

The Wild Wood was occupied by the predators, and they were insane with hunger as the animals had fled before them and gone to the hedges and fields elsewhere. The Mad Fox was one of these ravenous enemies that were left behind; so the tale in question says, he was a beast with black ears and red eyes, and it was he whom the tuft of rabbit fur fell before. He snaked it long tongue out to catch it as it floated before long whiskered nose, and he gobbled it down with a great chomping action. He could feel that the Black Rabbit was somewhere in the bramble tangle, and his eyes grew white with the thought of food.

It is also said that the Mad Fox was prone to stalk with his prey with a long dribble of spittle hanging from his mouth He blindly sought out the Black Rabbit with this trademark drool; on his way he passed a bush from which a number of pieces had been tried. He padded out of the thicket and into a shallow valley between two trees which were a vague brown colour; his nose told him that the Black Rabbit was sitting around the corner.

With a lick of his lips and his drip of slime flying away, the Mad Fox scuttled down the gap on his white belly and flung himself around the tree. The story never fails to add that there was a red glow in his eyes as the Black Rabbit sneered and stared with his own white ones.

It is at this point that the teller of the tale will take a pause; some have a short one and others will make it lengthier. As it is a tale told more to kittens than bucks and grown does, they will clamour for their mother or great-grandfather to finish the story, whereas some would rather sit and stare with wide hazel eyes.

What did happen next is the part that made the Black Rabbit a hero, for the story resumes where he is sitting in a bramble dell in a puddle of red with a polished dog-like skull sitting beside him. A tangle of different bones were said to lie scattered around him as gnawed on a rib with a red face and clawed paws. The tasteless leaves were dripping with yet more blood and the Mad Fox was nowhere to be seen; no adult will shirk from telling the children this story. The rabbit has always led a perilous life as he is eaten by almost everyone, and the kittens huddle together as they are this. They are also told that they will live short lives that may end brutally, but that if they take heart in the tale of the Black Rabbit, they need not fear the fox that would kill them.