Cut Across, Hare

One day a stranger came to the woods, he was pretty fine, and talked a big game. He had been all over, and people had been so impressed with him they had put statues up in all those places he’d visited. And he became good friends real quick with everyone that mattered, with everybody that was somebody.

Soon he was about all you heard about. Flamingo did this or Flamingo did that, Flamingo told a joke at the meadow, Flamingo had stood on one leg at the swamp edge and snapped a frog who had crossed him. Oh you knew that Flamingo he was somebody important , and if you didn’t know, why he was sure to show up and let you know.

Flamingo became somehow the best friend of Tortoise, so quick that it made your head swivel. And he didn’t do it like most folks did, by saying how great Tortoise was and repeating what Tortoise had told them and wasn’t it spiffy? No, in fact Tortoise he went around talking about how he had heard this or that said by Flamingo, and wasn’t he clever. It was somewhat disconcerting, to have the normal order of things out of whack, old hands of the woodlands got themselves bent out of shape a bit, folks like Fox and Raven and garden snake thought it was a bit gauche how Flamingo was prancing about with his feathers so gorgeous it hurt to look at.

But Flamingo didn’t seem to even notice he was ruffling people wrong.

When a big shot moves into a new area there is always different ways things might go, the big shot might think the area ain’t big enough for them and move on, or the big shot might find themselves getting cut down to size and then they move on unless they really get cut so bad they can’t move — but really no big shot wants to stay in an area any longer when they stop being big for that’s just the big shot style, or finally the big shot might think to themselves one day “I like it here, and maybe I oughta stop my ramblin’ ways and settle down”

Flamingo got to being real satisfied with the woods, and most of the creatures of the woods being easily dazzled they thought the world of him and his pinkish white wings and long golden legs. Fox couldn’t much stand him, the jealousy of a second in command feeling himself slipping to third.

And so Flamingo thought he ought to take himself a wife, and who’d he pick, well only Miss Muskrat would do for him. He laid court to her.

Well Miss Muskrat was pretty fine and she wasn’t that in the market, but Flamingo was persistent I will give him that. He would parade in his finery outside her house in the early morning when the sun reflected off his beak and back, reading poetry he had composed in her honor.

Ondatra

Well, look at ya

So fine and speedy

So comfortably well off

So well off and not needy

But if you needed

I’d spot ya,

for I love ya

Ondatra

Ondatra being Miss Muskrat’s given name, which somehow Flamingo had learned out of whoever knew it.

Miss Muskrat it must be admitted had seemed less happy the last few years, like she was sad about something, and so folks was surprised when she seemed to find Flamingo acceptable, even if you could not really say that she welcomed his attentions.

Flamingo let out there was going to be a big to-do in the Meadow, that was spruced up and made passable for the gentry, and it weren’t no secret that this was going to be the announcement of his and Miss Muskrat’s coming marriage. Everybody that was anybody would be there.

When you got there, it was one heck of a shindig! Over 3000 fireflies were up in the dark sky, making interlocking diamond shapes zipping back and forth. About 20 stags were gathered at the outer boundary, with their antlers holding woven spiderwebs silver with dew (to keep the fireflies from wandering off), and a dozen robins were singing about how great Flamingo was — birds tend to stick together.

Miss Muskrat was sitting on the main stone in that big pile of stones by the dandelions, and sitting with her was Miss Beaver, Whippoorwill, somewhere between 3 and 6 squirrels (you know how they tend to run off and back and make counting hard), and Grandmaw Possum.

Flamingo was standing out by the pink and yellow flowers, with the fireflies about his head, looking like a painting in the moonlight.

When the time was right Tortoise stood up and tinkled a little silver spoon alongside a cup that was made out of some sort of white stone with blue drawings of flowers and butterflies on it “Attention, attention, I believe my good friend Flamingo has an announcement to make!”

“Deed I do, I do indeed! It hardly seems possible that a fellow with as much going for him as I do could be made any happier or more complete, but I am here to announce that what seems possible has expanded, for now I am to marry!” here he paused to let it sink in and then he went on “That’s right, fair damsels of the Woodland, and heretofore worried bachelors who can sleep at ease from hence onwards, I shall be taking a bride and that bride to be whose house I shall grace is none other than the lovely Miss Muskrat, my own, my beautiful and dutiful Ondatra!”

Here Tortoise led a round of applause, and Fox gave a toast and said “I suppose that Miss Muskrat will be as happy married to Flamingo as he is being Flamingo, and who could be happier than that!? So three cheers and if you got any complaints, well now’s the time or shut it!”

There was a lot of cheers and applause then, and Tortoise had the dormice carry little iced tumblers of sherbet around to celebrate his friend’s good fortune, for Miss Muskrat was rich. Miss Muskrat only cast her eye down with that sad but somewhat resigned look she had taken to wearing thsee past few years.

“Well maybe I got a complaint” Whoa now, what was that. It was a voice that struck folks familiar, like a ghost from the past. It came from over there, by the tree of the young owl who had moved out by the edge of the meadow to get away from his wise and domineering elder. “Who?” said the owl, but everybody knew by the quickened beating of their hearts, by how Miss Muskrat sat up straighter and her eyes lit up and shined with barely held back, happy tears, how Tortoise changed from dark rich green to something paler, and how Fox sneered slightly and arched a brow as out of the shadows, wearing a cloak of matted black fur of some other animal and a wide brimmed hat through which his long ears poked came a figure nobody had thought to ever see again.

HARE!

You could hear the breeze stir the long grass. And then “This is a great day, a wonderful day for the woodland!” Tortoise spoke first, his color returned “After these many years a hero we feared lost has returned, the Great Hare, himself”

“Thank you, Tortoise, you always do speak well. But I have complaints”

“And Who are you, and what right do you have to complaints?” asked Flamingo, taken aback by this lanky and slightly rakish looking adventurer.

“I have the same right to complaints of any creature that stands in convocation before its fellows,” said Hare “and I am as your benefactor has named me — Hare, no more no less, and for the thing you did not ask, namely what my complaint was, well it’s simply this, Miss Muskrat does not love you and should not marry you”

“Hare, Hare?” said Flamingo, “oh yes, it seems to me I have heard of you. A brash young fellow who likes to race! But does not win much” here Flamingo laughed — a small voice of one of the youngest Beavers could be heard somewhere in the back yelling “Hare won the race” and its mother shushing him angry.

“Yeah” said Hare “I like to race, and I can win a race too, when I’ve a mind to”

“Then let us race for Miss Muskrat’s hand in marriage, as gentlemen do”

“I suppose she’ll marry who she want, but I’ll race you anyhow, just to put you in your place, second to me.”

“Ok well there is a track I’m sure you’re familiar with..”

“Not so fast, cotton candy, you laid the challenge, I pick the trail. And I say round the quiet pond where the Cottonwoods stand”

Well Flamingo didn’t have no way to back out, but it was obvious what he’d hoped was to borrow his friend’s car, which wasn’t going to work round the pond, because it would never be able to get past that area. It wasn’t so great for old Flamingo the track that had been chosen because a Hare and a Flamingo are about evenly matched for speed, but Flamingo having heard how Hare was super fast had good reason to worry.

The next morning everybody gathered at the pond, and Hare and Flamingo both showed up at dawn. But when he saw the pond and the path round it Hare’s ears drooped a bit, and Flamingo smirked with his side eye drooping sarcastically for the path was not at all what it normally was, in fact it was clear at least a dozen heavy lifting animals had been at work all night making the path near unpassable with fallen trees, rocks, and ivy all strewn about, all stuff that would make it easy hard for Hare to get past, but no problem for Flamingo, who could fly.

Fox came up and had in his hand a shooter, and raised it up and shot in the air, and the two shot off. Flamingo with his wings flapping and body passing over the detritus and plain old impediments left Hare long behind, but Hare was still doing what he could, hell nobody else in the whole woods could possibly have ran with as much heart as Hare did then. And it hurt some folks to see their hero, newly reborn it seemed, struggling.

But then across the pond by the Cottonwoods Ondatra Muskrat stood up and yodelled across to Hare, yelling “Cut across, Hare. Hare, cut across, it’s you that I want to wed”

Now I don’t know all the ins and outs of this story, it was already said she was her own woman, so why the need for Hare to win for wedding? Maybe she was also proud and would not step back from her engagement, who knows all that. But Hare, he turned sideways, and started hopping with alacrity over the fallen logs and onto the backs of stones in the pond and soon he came across the pond.

Well it sure was a sore looking Flamingo when he finally came over the finish line, because just like that old story of the Tortoise and the Hare — you know which one I mean — he found Hare waiting there for him.

The folks were coming up from all about, chattering and happy for Hare and Miss Muskrat and maybe happy to see Flamingo taken down a peg, and in fact he didn’t look so fine at race’s end, his pink feathers all dirty from the run, as he did at race’s beginning.

“You Cheated” accused Flamingo.

“Shut up, Flamingo” folks turned, it was a stern looking Tortoise coming up.

“Bu..but”

“I said shut up” and there you knew it was the end of the great friendship of Flamingo and Tortoise, rich folks just can’t tolerate a loser.

Tortoise came up to Hare, and raised his paw in the air and proclaimed “THE WINNER!”, he let the paw drop and then softer he said “And I sure hope you intend to settle down now Hare, with your wife in wedded bliss”

“That is exactly my intention, no need to doubt it”

Tortoise nodded sagely “I proclaim A Great Wedding feast must be held!”

And it was.

Everybody was at that fest which Tortoise threw to show what good friends he was with Hare, all except Flamingo, who evidently packed up and moved on to some other place for him to preen and talk a good game.

This article was written by IG Agents 6 and 71.