CHAPTER VIIFLOP EAR GETS AWAY
For two or three days Jimmie made Flop Ear do, over and over again, the first two tricks—those of jumping through the barrel hoop, and standing up with a piece of carrot on his nose. The rabbit did not mind doing them, for he was getting to like the boy, because he was very kind and good.
“But two tricks are not enough for a rabbit,” the boy said. “I want you to know some more, and then I can get up a little animal show, or circus, with you.” Then the boy said to himself: “I ought to have more animals. I wonder if I could get a dog and teach him some tricks, or a cat.”
“Gracious!” thought Flop Ear. “I hope he doesn’t get a dog that will bite. If he does I’ll have to run away if I get the chance.”
Several times Flop Ear had thought of going away. He might easily have done it, too, for the boy often let the rabbit come out of the box.
“But then,” said Flop Ear to himself, “if I ran away I would not get such nice things to eatas I get here. So I think I’ll stay for a while. I wonder what other trick that boy will teach me?”
Flop Ear soon found out. One day Jimmie came home from school, bringing another boy with him.
“I’ll show you my tame rabbit,” said Jimmie to his friend.
“Where did you get him?” the other boy asked. The boy’s name was Sam.
“I found him in the basket, when I brought it in filled with wood,” answered Jimmie. “He’s such a funny rabbit, with his one flop ear. Here he is in this box.”
Jimmie opened the box. Sam leaned over, and, before Jimmie could stop him, lifted the rabbit out of the box, raising him up by taking hold of his ears.
“Here! Don’t do that!” cried Jimmie.
“Don’t do what?”
“Lift my rabbit that way—by the ears.”
“Why not?”
“Because it hurts them.”
“It does not!” cried Sam, holding Flop Ear up higher in the air.
“Indeed it does hurt me,” Flop Ear was saying to himself. But, of course, he could not tell the boys that, as they did not understand rabbit talk. But Flop Ear kicked and wiggled hislegs, and showed as plainly as he could that he did not like being lifted around this way.
“Stop it!” cried Jimmie. “Put him down, Sam. You’ll pull off his ears, maybe.”
“I will not. You always lift rabbits by their ears.”
“No you don’t!” cried Jimmie. “My mother says that lots of folks think it’s right to lift a rabbit by the ears, but it isn’t, any more than you’d lift a dog or cat by its ears.”
“You couldn’t lift a cat by her ears,” said Sam. “They’re not big enough. But some dogs have ears almost as big as rabbits, only they don’t stand up straight.”
“Well, never mind about that,” said Jimmie. “Put my rabbit down, please. Or, if you want to hold him, do it this way,” and Jimmie took the rabbit in his arms as a little girl might hold her kitten. Flop Ear liked to be held that way, and he liked it still more when Jimmie fed him a nice tender green leaf of lettuce.
“This is the best way to hold rabbits,” Jimmie went on.
“Well, I didn’t know it. I’m sorry if I hurt yours,” said Sam, who was really a good boy.
“Oh, I guess you didn’t hold Flop Ear long enough to hurt him,” went on Jimmie. “And now I’ll show you two tricks he can do, and then we’ll teach him another.”
Flop Ear jumped through the hoop, for the first trick, and then stood up with the piece of carrot on his nose, not offering to eat it until Jimmie clapped his hands.
“What do you think of that?” asked Jimmie of Sam.
“I think they are fine tricks. What else are you going to have him do?”
“I’m going to see if I can harness him up and make him draw a little wagon. I’ve got a small one that used to belong to my little brother. He’s too big to play with it now. Besides, he is away on a visit to my grandmother. So I’m going to take his wagon, and see if Flop Ear will pull it.”
This talk was all strange to Flop Ear, but he soon found out what it meant. Jimmie put his rabbit back in the box, with some cabbage leaves to nibble, and then the two boys went away. They came back in a little while with the small wagon, and some pieces of string. Jimmie also had a little leather collar that had once been on the neck of his pet cat, that had grown too big to wear it.
“We’ll put the collar on the rabbit,” Jimmie said, “and fasten the strings to it. Then we’ll fasten the strings to the wagon and when the bunny hops along he’ll pull the cart after him, like a pony.”
“That will be great!” cried Sam.
But it was not as easy as they thought it would be. In the first place Flop Ear did not like the collar on his neck. He had never worn one, and he thought it might hurt him. So when Jimmie and Sam tried to put it on the rabbit kicked and wiggled.
“Oh, stand still, Flop Ear!” cried Jimmie. “We won’t hurt you.”
But even this did no good. The more the boys tried to put the collar on Flop Ear’s neck the more the bunny wiggled.
“We never can do it,” said Sam.
“Oh, yes we can,” returned Jimmie. “I know a way. I’ll go and get a carrot. You hold it for him to eat, and while he’s nibbling at it I’ll slip the collar on his neck.”
“Well, we can try,” said Sam.
Flop Ear did not understand all that the boys said. But when he saw Sam holding out a carrot to him, the rabbit knew enough to want to eat it. And as he stretched out his neck to reach the carrot Jimmie quickly slipped on the collar and fastened it.
“There you are, Flop Ear!” he said.
And surely enough, there was the collar on the rabbit’s neck.
“Well, it isn’t as bad as I thought it was,” said Flop Ear to himself. “It doesn’t hurt me, butit feels funny, and sort of tickles. I don’t exactly like it and I wish I could get it off.”
He shook his head, hoping to shake off the collar, but it would not come. Then he tried to push it off with his paw, but he could not do that, either.
“No, you can’t get it off, Flop Ear,” said Jimmie with a laugh, as he saw what his pet was trying to do. “But never mind, I won’t make you keep it on always, only once in a while when you pull the wagon.”
“Let’s hitch him up now and see what he does,” suggested Sam.
“All right,” answered Jimmie.
They fastened the wagon to the collar of Flop Ear with strings. Then Jimmie said:
“Gid-dap, Flop Ear!”
“That’s not the way to talk to a rabbit,” said Sam. “That’s horse-talk.”
“Well, I don’t know how to tell a rabbit to go on in rabbit talk,” said Jimmie, “so I’ll have to make believe he’s a horse. Gid-dap, Flop Ear!”
But the rabbit would not move. He lay down on the ground, for he did not know what Jimmie wanted him to do.
“That trick isn’t going to work,” said Sam.
“Yes, it is!” cried Jimmie, after thinking a minute. “I have a new way. You go in frontof Flop Ear and hold the carrot out, but just so he can’t reach it.”
“What good will that do?” asked Sam.
“You’ll see,” answered Jimmie.
Sam held the carrot in front of Flop Ear, and a little way from his nose. The rabbit smelled the carrot, and, as he could not reach it, he hopped forward.
“Now pull it away from him!” quickly cried Jimmie. “Hold it in front of him, and every time he jumps to get it, move it ahead a little. That will keep him moving, and he’ll pull the wagon.”
“Oh, sure enough! so he will!” cried Sam in much excitement.
And that is what Flop Ear did. In trying to reach the carrot, which Sam kept moving away from him, Flop Ear had to move himself forward, and, as he did this, he dragged the little wagon after him.
“Hurrah!” cried Jimmie. “Now he’s pulling it.”
Half way across the yard Flop Ear hopped after the carrot which he was never able to reach. And with every move he made, the wagon, which was tied fast to his collar, moved after him.
“I don’t think this is a nice way to treat me,” thought Flop Ear. “I want that carrot, but Ican’t get it. Still, I suppose it is a trick and I must do it.”
“Shall I give him the carrot now?” asked Sam, when Flop Ear had pulled the wagon all the way across the yard.
“Yes, give it to him,” said Jimmie.
So Flop Ear got the carrot after all, and it tasted very good to him.
“Well, maybe this trick isn’t so bad after all,” the bunny thought.
When he had eaten one carrot Sam held out another for Flop Ear, and once more the rabbit dragged the wagon across the yard.
“He’s learning the trick all right,” said Jimmie.
In a few days Flop Ear got so he could draw the little wagon very easily. And Sam did not have to keep moving away from in front of him with a carrot all the while, either. Jimmie would put a carrot on one side of the yard, and set Flop Ear and the little wagon at the other side.
“Now go to get your carrot, Floppy!” the boy would say. Then away Flop Ear would hop to get the nice yellow vegetable, and, at the same time, he would be drawing the wagon.
“Now he can do three tricks,” said Jimmie.
When he was not doing the wagon trick Flop Ear did not have to wear the collar, and he wasglad of that, as it tickled him, and he did not like it, though it did not hurt him.
For some time Flop Ear stayed with Jimmie, learning some new tricks. Often other boys and girls would come to Jimmie’s yard to look at the pet rabbit and stroke his soft, white fur. Jimmie liked this. And because Jimmie told them about not lifting rabbits by their ears, no one ever took Floppy up that way.
And then, one day, Flop Ear suddenly felt that he ought to go away.
“It is nice here, and all that, and I have a good home,” he said to himself, “but I think I ought to travel on and see if I can not find my real underground house, and my own folks. I want so much to see them. I’m going away.”
And that afternoon, when Flop Ear was taken out of his box, to run around the yard, he waited until Jimmie went into the house, and then the bunny quickly dug a hole under the fence and got out.
“Once more I am on my travels,” he said.