The Rabbit was so boastful that he would claim to do whatever he saw
anyone else do, and so tricky that he could usually make the other
animals believe it all. Once he pretended that he could swim in the
water and eat fish just as the Otter did, and when the others told him
to prove it he fixed up a plan so that the Otter himself was deceived.
Soon afterward they met again and the Otter said, "I eat ducks
sometimes." Said the Rabbit, "Well, I eat ducks too." The Otter
challenged him to try it; so they went up along the river until they
saw several ducks in the water and managed to get near without being
seen. The Rabbit told the Otter to go first. The Otter never hesitated,
but dived from the bank and swam under water until he reached the
ducks, when he pulled one down without being noticed by the others,
and came back in the same way.
While the Otter had been under the water the Rabbit had peeled
some bark from a sapling and made himself a noose. "Now," he said,
"Just watch me;" and he dived in and swam a little way under the
water until he was nearly choking and had to come up to the top to
breathe. He went under again and came up again a little nearer to
the ducks. He took another breath and dived under, and this time he
came up among the ducks and threw the noose over the head of one and
caught it. The duck struggled hard and finally spread its wings and
flew up from the water with the Rabbit hanging on to the noose.
It flew on and on until at last the Rabbit could not hold on any
longer, but had to let go and drop. As it happened, he fell into a
tall, hollow sycamore stump without any hole at the bottom to get out
from, and there he stayed until he was so hungry that he had to eat
his own fur, as the rabbit does ever since when he is starving. After
several days, when he was very weak with hunger, he heard children
playing outside around the trees. He began to sing:
Cut a door and look at me;
I'm the prettiest thing you ever did see.
The children ran home and told their father, who came and began to cut
a hole in the tree. As he chopped away the Rabbit inside kept singing,
"Cut it larger, so you can see me better; I'm so pretty." They made
the hole larger, and then the Rabbit told them to stand back so that
they could take a good look as he came out. They stood away back,
and the Rabbit watched his chance and jumped out and got away.