The Pyle Inside

Once upon a time, there was a family of rabbits. They were your typical brown rabbits; small, cute, and almost completely harmless. The family consisted of mama, papa, Peter, Emily, and Johnny. Peter was the oldest, the strongest, and most likely the favorite son, although mama and papa would never say. Emily was the next oldest, she was a beautiful bunny, with golden brown fur and a tail just like a cotton ball. Then there was Johnny, the youngest, he was very shy, and spent most of the day on his own exploring new places beyond the animal towns. He would draw them on his map, which he kept secret from everyone, he dug a hole on the other side of the river where he kept it.

They lived in a small hole under a hill. This hill was part of the meadow, where all the rabbits of Rabbit Hole lived. This was a peaceful town, there was a river just to the right of the meadow. The beavers made a dam there, where all of them live. The rabbits and the beavers get along well, sometimes the rabbit children would play in the pool the dam created. Other times the children would play in the deer forest just to the left of the meadow.  Life in Rabbit Hole was all too perfect, they even had a vegetable garden maintained by the rabbit farmers.         

One afternoon Johnny was off exploring new lands. He was so out of breath from walking all that way, that he had to sit down for a minute or two. He heard some noise coming from further into the forest, it sounds like singing, Johnny thought to himself. When he walked further towards the noise, the forest ended and the most magnificent meadow began. He was in shock, the meadow was full of perfect places for rabbit holes and it was at least triple the size of Rabbit Hole, in Johnny’s opinion. Behind the meadow was where the singing was coming from. Johnny walks towards it and soon found a huge waterfall with a pool at the bottom of it. In the pool was an enormous amount of animals, just swimming there singing their songs. The animals were just about the same size as rabbits. But these animals had wide feet, there was also this netting in between each toe. All of a sudden a light bulb went off in Johnny’s head. He had heard of this species before. He read a book from the wise rabbit about all different types of species, but he forgot what it called these orange-billed creatures. Johnny was frustrated. He knew what they were called; he just couldn’t remember.

“Was it hockles? No, nox? No, docks? No . . .,” Johnny thought to himself, “Oh I remember, they are ducks! That’s it!”

Johnny was so proud of himself for remembering that he didn’t even notice a little duck waddling towards him. He finally noticed when the dock sat down right beside him. Johnny was surprised and didn’t know how to react, so he started talking to him,

“Hey there, I’m Johnny! What’s your name?”

All of a sudden the dock started talking in a high pitched voice, “I’m Waddles, what are you doing here?”

Right as Johnny was about to answer he found a large group of docks surrounding him. Johnny was overwhelmed and started slowly walking away. A few minutes later he found himself back in the forest on his way home. Once he got back to the edge of the deer forest he was confused. There were no children running around him. In fact, the forest was completely silent. He started walking slower and quieter until he reached the final line of trees where he peeked out into the meadow and found no one. He slowly crept into the meadow, where he saw a glimpse of something big. It looked to him like a bear, Johnny immediately retreated back into the forest. After a while, he finally got up the courage to peek back into the meadow. He found that there was no bear, but something far worse. What Johnny saw there in this meadow, he was afraid to call home, would change his life as he knows it. What Johnny saw was a . . . hunter!

He soon forgot about drawing the new place he explored onto his map and started thinking about his family. Johnny had no clue to where they were. He was worried and scared of what might have happened to them. Johnny soon realized that the hunter had gone over to the river. He hopped over to the nearest rabbit hole where he quickly went down into the hole. The rabbits in the hole were scared out of their minds. Once they saw who it was they were quickly relieved.

“Johnny!” His cousin Rachel exclaimed.

Johnny made no time for greetings. He immediately opened his map and spread it on the floor. It was up to him, he thought, to save the town and get them out to safety. Johnny looked at his map and thought of ways they could get out. Distract the hunter and run into the woods, no Johnny thought too dangerous. It had to be something they could do without going above ground. Then all of a sudden Johnny heard a noise, it was the faintest noise only a rabbit with the biggest ears could hear. It came from the left, Johnny looked down at his map and his eyes got so big it looked like he could see through the map. Johnny had a very clever idea. All the rabbit holes in the meadow were mapped out on his map. There was only so far between each hole. He told his aunt, uncle, and his cousins his plan, and how he needed someone to go to the next rabbit hole down and tell them to start digging towards this hole.

“I’ll do it!” Johnny’s cousin Alec exclaimed.

“No Alec, you can’t do it you won’t know which direction they should dig towards.” Rachel replied. Johnny realized that Rachel was right and that he would have to warn everyone. So he told his cousins which way to start digging and got up the courage to pack up his map and start crawling out of the hole. Once his head had reached the top he peeked out and started looking for the hunter. He soon found him on the other side of the river. Johnny hopped out of the hole and dashed into the next one. He crawled into the hole opened up his map told the rabbits in that hole his plan and which way to dig. Once he was done he crawled out of that hole and into the next. It took a while, but he finally reached his hole. When he entered, his family was overjoyed to see him, everyone was there, safe and sound. He got so caught up in the excitement that he almost forgot to tell them his plan. He soon remembered and informed them right away. He had to keep going so he said goodbye and was about to go out of the hole when he saw something cover it up. The hole went dark for a second until the shoe uncovered his hole. Johnny was scared and realized he had to wait a little bit until the hunter went further away. He only had a few more holes to get to, so he decided to make a run for it. He reached the final hole and helped them dig. After a while light started coming from where they were digging, they quickly finished the tunnel and found that the whole tunnel was done. Johnny led the rabbits to the next hole and took those rabbits to the next hole until he had all of the rabbits in Rabbit’s Hole in his Aunt and Uncle’s home. He then had some of the strongest rabbits dig a tunnel into the woods where they would be safe enough to go up to the surface. After a while the tunnel was done and ready to be used. Johnny went first and looked out of the hole, it was all clear. He was about to exit when a voice called from somewhere in the mob of rabbits;

“Where will we go?” The voice called, soon all the rabbits were agreeing and refusing to exit the tunnel. Johnny thought for a second, as his family made their way through the crowd to the front of the pack.

“Where were you today!” Mama asked.

“That’s not important right now,” Emily interrupted, “we need to find a place to go, we can’t stay here with a hunter running around!”

Johnny saw her point, and soon that of a genius idea.

“We will go to the duck pool!” Johnny yelled into the crowd. No one understood him so he explained where he was earlier that day.

Once everyone understood where they were going, Johnny checked again for the hunter. When he gave the all clear and left the tunnel, all of the rabbits followed him out into the forest. Johnny immediately continued in the way he adventured earlier that day. After a while of walking through the woods, Emily started complaining about their feet hurting and how tired she was. Johnny felt that way too, but he didn’t want to stop until he reached the meadow, just in case he didn’t know which way to continue. After a while longer and they were still marching through the forest, Johnny made the decision to take a break and catch their breaths. It took a minute or two but the rabbits were okay to continue, so he led them on. Soon the rabbits were being led into a part that Johnny didn’t particularly remember. He got a little worried and started slowing down a little bit. He soon came to a complete stop and took out his map to decide where they should go next. When the map was laid on the forest floor, Johnny realized that he didn’t map out the way to the duck pool. He soon got very worried and decided to continue in the way they were going, Johnny recognized less and less of the forest. He soon remembered how he found the meadow in the first place, so he had everyone get completely silent. A few seconds later he heard a noise, a noise he recognized, it was the noise of singing docks! Johnny was overjoyed, he started running towards the noise, occasionally having to quiet everyone down so he could hear it again. But he did it, he led his town to safety! When he finally pushed away that last tree branch, all the rabbits cheered.

But there was one problem, the meadow belonged to the ducks. When the rabbits arrived they focused on the meadow that was perfect for a new town. Once they went further into the meadow they noticed all of the ducks swimming in the waterfall pool. Johnny went up to the closest duck and started talking to her,

“Hello, I’m Johnny…” Johnny started but was interrupted by the dock.

“Hola, me llamo Lucia, como estas,” the duck replied.  Johnny was very confused, he understood Waddles earlier that day. Why couldn’t he understand this duck? So Johnny went to go find Waddles, when he found him, Waddles was so excited to see him.

“Johnny! Your back!” Waddles exclaimed. Now Johnny was really confused, how was he able to talk to Waddles and not the other duck, he thought. So he brought Waddles over to the other duck and started talking to her again.

“Hi, again! My name is Johnny what is yours?”

The dock was confused and that’s when Waddles started translating what Johnny said. He soon found out that the docks name was Lucia. Waddles brought Johnny to the mayor of Poolesville, where he told him the rabbits situation. Mayor Charles was very understanding and told Johnny that he and his friends were welcome to build a new town right next to their pool. Johnny decided that the new town that would be called Springfield. Johnny was declared the official engineer of the town. He would design the holes in a way that they would always be able to exit underground in case of another emergency. Ever since then the rabbits and the ducks have lived a joyful life together.