The Rabbit Goes Duck Hunting

The Rabbit was so boastful that he would
claim to do whatever he saw anyone else do,
and he was so tricky that he would 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."
And the Rabbitt said, "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. Then he pulled one down without being
noticed by the others, he came back in the same
manner. 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.
The duck 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 way back and the Rabbit watched his
chance and jumped out and got away.