Atondido Stories
How Rabbit Deceived Fox
Long ago in Indian days in Canada, when Rabbit worked for
Glooskap as his forest guide, he was a great thief. He liked most
of all to steal by moonlight, and he crept quietly into gardens
and fields where Indian vegetables were growing, for he was
very fond of cabbage and lettuce and beans. Not far from his
home there lived alone an old widow woman who had no chil-
dren. She could not hunt game because she was a woman, and
she had never been trained to the chase, so she kept a little gar-
den from which she made a good living. All day long from
dawn until sunset she toiled hard, tilling her little garden, water-
ing her vegetables and keeping them free from weeds. And she
grew green cabbages and red carrots and yellow beans and big
fat pumpkins and Indian corn, which she traded with Indian
hunters in return for fish and meat.
In this way she always had plenty of food, and she lived very
well on good fare. But Rabbit, going his rounds one day, discov-
ered her garden, although it was deep in the forest, and every
night by moonlight or starlight he robbed it, and grew sleek and
fat from the results of his thefts. And morning after morning the
old widow woman found that many cabbages and carrots were
missing and that much harm had been done to her plants. She
had an idea that Rabbit was the pilferer, for she had heard that
he was a great thief, but she was not very sure. She watched
many nights, but she was never able to catch the robber, so
stealthily did he come, and it was not easy to see him in the
shadows. So she said to herself, "I will set up a scarecrow, a fig-
ure in the shape of a little man, and I will place it at my garden
gate, and it will frighten away the robber, whoever he may be,
for I must save my vegetables or I shall starve when the cold
winter comes."
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