The rabbit and pirate problem

I was woken early one morning by a hammering on my back door. I quickly dressed and made my way downstairs, to find Alun in an agitated mood.

“There’s a hole, Jed,” he said.

“A hole, where?”

“Just off the path from my house to the dock, I passed it on the way to meet the morning boat.”

“What sort of hole?” I said. “How big.”

“About this big,” he said, arms stretch about two feet. “And about a foot deep.”

“How strange. I wonder how it got there.” Alun and myself are the only residents of Happy Island, and apart from the daily visit from the boatman nobody ever comes to the island.”

“It could be an animal, Jed. Some sort of burrowing creature. A rabbit perhaps.”

“But we don’t have any rabbits on the island.” Happy Island has never attracted the more exotic mainland animals, lacking as it does, the dazzling attractions the mainland has to offer rabbits, badgers, voles and fieldmice. All we have here are stoats and weasels, who are more easily pleased.

“Perhaps one came over in the boat one morning.”

“I suppose,” I said.

I assumed that this was the end of the matter. The sudden appearance of a hole, though a newsworthy event, is not the sort of thing to dominate a person’s life, at least not for more than 24 hours.

Or so I assumed.

However, the next morning I was woken early by a hammering on my back door. I quickly dressed and rushed downstairs, to find Alun in an agitated mood.

“I’ve brought a book about rabbit holes, Jed,” he said. “I phoned the boatman last night, luckily he had one in his library and brought it over on the morning boat.”

The book was titled ‘How to recognise a rabbit hole’. It was clearly well-thumbed and must have been an important text for the boatman at some point in his life.

We walked over to the hole to see if it matched the description in the book, however, before we got there we were in for a surprise. There was another hole, freshly dug.

“This is just like the other hole, Jed,” Alun said. “I’m sure it wasn’t here twenty minutes ago.”

“Well let’s check whether it’s a rabbit hole.”

Alun read through the book with great care, while I measured the hole with a rule I had taken along especially for hole-measurement purposes.

“Two feet and three inches across,” I said, using Happy Island measurements. We’ve never gone in for those new-fangled metres and centimetres.  “And one foot, three inches deep at the deepest point.”

“It’s not a rabbit then Jed,” Alun said. “It says here that a rabbit hole is never more than nine inches across and that their burrows can run for miles and miles.”

“How strange,” I said. “If it’s not a rabbit I wonder what it could be?”

“There’s only one way to find out, Jed,” Alun said. “We’ll have to catch the culprit in the hole-digging act.”

A plan more easily described than enacted,  I thought. I imagined us combing the island for weeks in search of a rabbit scrabbling a burrow, but I was wrong.

As we turned the corner we caught the culprit in the act, a detectorist with metal detector and shovel, digging yet another hole.

“Are you a rabbit?” Alun shouted.

“Who me?” said the detectorist. “No, I’m not a rabbit, I’m a pirate.”

“A pirate?” I said. “Are you sure?” It seemed unlikely.

“Yes, I’m greybeard.”

“Greybeard, but you don’t have a beard. You don’t even have an eyepatch.”

“Well, I’m not actually The Greybeard, I’m his descendant, his great, great, great, great, great, great, grandson. Of course, back in the day all the pirates had beards, greybeard, blackbeard, redbeard, bluebeard, goateebeard, the shaving facilities on pirate ships were dreadful.”

“But what are you doing digging holes?”

“Searching for treasure of course, I am a pirate.”

“Treasure, here on Happy Island.”

“Well, possibly. The truth is the treasure map I inherited doesn’t actually say which island the treasure’s buried on, just that it’s an obscure island nobody knows about. I’m trying them all out.”

“Let’s take a look at the map,” Alun said, “See if I recognise any of the island’s features.”

Alun took the map from the pirate and studied it briefly. “It says here that the treasure’s buried 23 paces north of the great big tree,” Alun said. “But there aren’t any trees anywhere near here, why are you digging a hole there?”

“Well, that map was written hundreds of years ago, a big tree was a good marker then, but it’s no use now, all the vegetation from the pirate era will have disappeared years ago. That’s why I’m using a metal detector, once I locate the treasure I can work out where the tree would have been.”

“But you don’t know which island the treasure’s buried on,” I said.

“No.”

“And you don’t know where on the island it is.”

“No.”

“So you’re searched every inch of ground on every island anywhere near the mainland. That will take years.”

“It’s taken seven generations so far, but us pirates don’t give up.”

“But what are you digging up, if it’s not treasure? All these holes you’re leaving, you must be detecting something.”

“Oh, all sorts of things, you wouldn’t believe what gets buried on remote island, look what I found here, an old rabbit cage.”

“Excellent,” said Alun, and suddenly picked up the pirate and thrust him into the cage, clanging the door behind him.

“You’ve just put the pirate in a rabbit’s cage,” I said.

“That’s no pirate, Jed,” Alun said, “That’s a rabbit. Here, look at this.”

So saying, he passed me another book, ‘How to tell a pirate from a rabbit’. “The clue is the fluffy tail, that and the fact that he’s furry, only two feet long and he doesn’t have a beard or eyepatch.”

“But why would a rabbit be searching for treasure?”

“He wasn’t Jed, that was just a ruse to fool us, he was planning to build an extensive network of warrens. If we hadn’t have caught him he’d have moved his family into his new holey homes and we’d have been overrun in no time.”

“You lied to us,” I said to the pirate. Sorry, I meant I said to the rabbit.

“Yes,” said the rabbit, “And I would have gotten away with it if it hadn’t been for you pesky offmainlanders.”

“What are we going to do with him?” I asked Alun.

“Keep him as a pet Jed. I’ve always wanted a talking rabbit.”