“You know,” he went on to explain, “we things from under the earth are all scary—just as scary as you are. Only you’re so afraid of us that you never remember we have any one to be afraid of. When Slyfoot chases one of you silly bunnies you run round and round through the brush trying to hide yourself from him. But as long as you hide he’s hidden, too. All the time he’s trailing you. So he can take his time about finding you—and he always does. Now if you’d run straight out in the open, where the grass is short and there isn’t any place to hide, he wouldn’t dare to follow. He knows the owl would get him.”
“If he didn’t get us first,” was Nibble’s sly comment.
“But you’ve got twice as many chances to get away. You can dodge and run,” Stripes insisted. “Besides, your furry feet are so quiet; ours make much more noise when we’re galloping. And the big owl hears you before he looks for you.”
“He does?” Nibble exclaimed. “How do you know?”
“Why every one in the woods knows that an owl is either right-eared or left-eared. And whichever ear he uses most, that side of his head gets lop-sided from listening,” Stripes said.
“But his feathers are so fluffy I don’t see how any one would find out, if it’s really so,” Nibble objected.
“Killer (he meant the big weasel) ate one,” grinned Stripes. “I guess he ought to know. You see everything has something to be afraid of.”
They weren’t going very fast, Stripes was eating snails and licking little clusters of insect eggs from the under sides of leaves and digging grubs among the roots, while Nibble took a bite here and a bite there as is the way with rabbits. “Everything has something to be afraid of—and yet it’s terrible to be afraid,” he said.
“But if you’re not afraid, the others are afraid of you,” answered Stripes. “You’re the only rabbit who ever scared me. When you got so cross because I stole those quail eggs, I didn’t know what you’d do to me. Honest I didn’t.”
“I didn’t, either,” Nibble giggled, remembering how funny Stripes looked when he scrouched all up with his back turned and squinted over his shoulder. “I was too angry with you for being so bad. What could I have done, anyway?”