CHAPTER V
FLOP EAR AND THE BOY
Flop Ear awoke in the morning feeling hungry. All he had to do was to reach out and eat part of his hay-bed in which he had slept. I think that was rather funny. It isn’t every one who can get a breakfast as easily as that.
How would you like to reach out in the morning, when you wake up, and eat part of the pillow case, a bit of the sheet and perhaps nibble off one of the rosettes on the bedquilt? I guess it would not taste as good as your breakfast orange and oatmeal; would it? No indeed!
But a rabbit is different. They like hay, and they can sleep in it as well as eat it. So Flop Ear had no trouble getting his breakfast. And he knew that in the woods and fields all around him grew many other things he could eat.
“So, even though I am lost, I shall not go hungry,” thought Flop Ear. “But still I don’t want to be lost. I want to find my home, my father and my mother, and Snuggle and Pink Nose. I want to see my grandma, Lady Munch, too. Oh, how I wish that hunter man had never come to our woods!”
But there was no use wishing that now. Flop Ear was far away from home, and he must do the best he could either to find his way back to it, or to look for a new home.
“It is Summer now,” thought the little rabbit, “and it will be all right to sleep out in the fields or woods without going down into an underground burrow. But if I do not find my home before cold weather comes I shall have to dig a new one for myself. I wonder if I have forgotten how to dig, or burrow, as father calls it. I guess I’ll go out and try it now.”
Out from the warm little nest he had made for himself in the hay came Flop Ear. He found a soft place in the field and began to dig in the dirt, pawing it under him in a pile by scratching with his fore paws, almost as your dog does it when he feels like digging.
“I haven’t forgotten my digging lessons,” said Flop Ear. “So I will be all right when Winter comes. But it is a long way off yet. Now to try again to find my home.”