“What are troubles?” Flop Ear questioned.
“You will find out soon enough without my telling you,” answered the grandmother bunny. “Be happy while you can in your home in the woods, for you may not always be here.”
“Why not?” asked Flop Ear, but just then his grandmother had to go down into the burrow, or underground house, to help Mrs. Bunny make the beds.
Oh, you needn’t laugh! Rabbits have beds in their underground homes as well as you children have. Only, of course, the beds are not the same as yours.
The beds in Flop Ear’s home were just bunches of soft grass and leaves, piled together, and sometimes the rabbits used the soft white cotton from inside the milkweed plant. These beds had to be stirred up, fluffed and made soft by the rabbits once in a while, and that is what Lady Munch and Mrs. Bunny were doing.
“Troubles; eh?” thought Flop Ear. “I wonder what they can be, and I wonder if I shall ever go away from these woods? Well, I’ll be happy while I’m here, anyhow. And now I guess I’ll go and get Pink Nose and Snuggle and have some fun.”
Rabbits have fun by themselves, and with other animals, just as you children do; and rabbits can think and talk. Of course, they can’t talk as we do, but they can talk among themselves, and with other animals, and, very often, they know what you say to them, just as your kitten knows enough to come when you call her to dinner, or as your dog knows enough to carry your books from school when you put them in his mouth.
So when, in this story, I say that Flop Ear said something, or thought something, I mean he did it in a rabbit way, just as your cat and dog talk together in their languages. For some cats and dogs are good friends you know.
There was a dog named Don, who once ran away. He and Blackie, a lost cat, were really good friends, as you know if you have read the books about them.