BUNNY’S ADVENTURE

A family of rabbits lived in a hole in a field by the side of a railroad. The family consisted of a mother, a father, and their baby, Bunny. Bunny was very, very naughty and had a fascination with trains. One day, she told her mother, "Please take me to the railway station. I love trains! I want to know what it feels like to travel on a train."

Mother Rabbit was alarmed to hear her daughter's strange desire. She nipped the extraordinary wish in the bud by telling her to forget about taking a train ride.

“Stop talking nonsense; don’t you know it is extremely dangerous to go anywhere near human beings; they won’t spare you if they see you rosy, soft and tender; they will kill you and eat you up in no time,” she said.

Bunny was severely disappointed but she could not control her desire. She planned to fulfil her desire without the knowledge of her parents. One morning a little before noon she slipped out of her home and proceeded towards the nearest station. Reaching the station she hid herself under a bench on the platform. At about half past one a passenger train arrived.

It was jam packed with farmers who were shouting and quarrelling among themselves. Bunny did not know what to do when her eyes fell on the last small cosy bogy of the guard.

In a couple of lightning leaps she found herself in the guard’s compartment. She hid herself behind the box, which was always carried by guards.

From where she was hiding she had a nice view of the panoramic scenes that the train was running past , vast sea of fields and hills rolling in the distance. The train was moving at gentle speed.

Bunny was thrilled. The guard poured a cup of coffee from a flask and started sipping it with dreamy eyes when suddenly it happened. Cluck cluck. Bunny found herself having uncontrollable hiccups.

The guard who was a very alert fellow swung round to look in the direction of the box. It was not long before he lifted the poor Bunny by her ears from behind the box.

“You naughty thing, how dare you steal a ride in the train that too in my cabin. I am going to hand you over to the station master of the very next station”. At the next station he did what he said. The stationmaster, a cruel- faced man grabbed Bunny from the hands of the guard and dangling her in front of his greedy eyes said “What a tender juicy Bunny! My mouth waters like anything.”

“Hey Buddu put this thing in that TTE box. I will take it home tomorrow. You know tomorrow is my birthday. My wife will make a nice Bunny burger,” he told his assistant.

It was dark inside the box. Bunny huddled herself in a corner and started sobbing lamenting her fate. She cried and cried thinking of the impending death at the hands of the stationmaster and fell asleep.

At night she woke up to some noise that came from somewhere on one of the sides of the box. When she started looking closely for its source she saw the head of a mouse poking through a small hole on the side of the box. The mouse Spooky, a neighbour of Bunny, was surprised.

He had come to the station on his routine weekly raid of the parcel office. “Hey Bunny what are you doing here,” he asked. Bunny narrated the entire story between sobs. “Don’t worry I will do something,” he said and went out.

He ran straight into the nearby fields and collected a dozen of his friends and relatives and rushed back to the station sharpening their teeth on a rock on the way.

The assistant station master was snoring stretched out on his table. When they trooped in. It took them hardly half an hour to make a hole big enough for Bunny to wriggle out of the box.

Once out of the box she started dancing with joy. As she did so she upset a tumbler kept on a table. The metal tumbler fell on the floor. The ASM woke up with a start. Seeing the rabbit out of the box he sprang in the air to catch her. But Bunny flew out into the platform. Luckily exactly at that moment a goods train was entering the station. Bunny leaped onto the ledge of a wagon.

The poor ASM ran alongside the goods train for some distance till the end of the platform and gave up. The troop of mice that helped her waved to her. When the goods train neared her home by the side of the track it was almost dawn. It was not difficult for Bunny to jump on a bed of grass from the train. When she reached the house what awaited her was a severe twisting of her long ears by her father and mother!