Chapter Three
in which Rabbit organizes almost everything
RABBIT WAS THE MOST SENSIBLE of animals. If you were to ask anyone in the Hundred Acre Wood, “Is there anybody sensible around here?” they would be sure to say: “Go and see Rabbit.”
When you arrived at Rabbit’s house, which was a hole in the ground with a front door and a back door—very sensible—Rabbit would ask who you were and, if you were who Rabbit thought you ought to be, you would be invited in.
Rabbit’s front room had sensible things in it like calendars and colanders and fireside rugs, and fire irons and sturdy Royal Doulton china, and a map of Bournemouth on the wall. Once you were seated, Rabbit would bring you a sensible cup of tea on a large saucer in case of drips and, by way of a treat, a small piece of shortbread from a tin with a picture of Edinburgh Castle on the top. Then, having made sure that you didn’t scatter any crumbs, he would send you back where you’d come from.
“It’s just as well there’s somebody around these parts who has some sense,” Rabbit used to say on these occasions, “otherwise anything might happen.”
If someone asked Rabbit what that anything might be, he would reply: “Pirates, revolution, things thrown on the ground and not picked up. And you should always carry a clean handkerchief with you just in case.”
One day, when Rabbit and Christopher Robin and Pooh were having tea on a sunny bank not far from Rabbit’s house, they found the conversation going just this way. They’d got to the bit about revolution, at which point Pooh stuck his head right into his pot of honey.
“Which reminds me,” continued Rabbit regardless, “nobody eats sensibly around here. Everyone should have gardens like mine. Then we could grow vegetables in rows like the Romans did.”
“Did the Romans grow vegetables in rows?” asked Christopher Robin.
“Well,” Rabbit replied, “if they had grown vegetables they would have been in rows, because it’s too difficult to grow things in circles.”
Then, leaning in close to Pooh, he said: “Consider all that honey and condensed milk. It cannot be good for you. You should eat as I do.”
Pooh pulled his head out of the honey-pot, and stared at Rabbit.
“I propose rationing you to one pot a month and replacing the honey with homegrown carrots and radishes.”
“Radishes!”Pooh cried in dismay. “Just joking,” said Rabbit. But if Rabbit was only teasing Pooh about his honey, he was serious about organizing things in the Forest.
“What we most need around here,”he announced,“apart from gardens and sensible diets and some overdue hedging and ditching, is a Census.”
Pooh licked the honey from his nose and asked Rabbit what he meant.
“A Census is when you write down the names of everyone who is living in a place, and how many of them, and so on.”
“But why, Rabbit?”
“So that if anyone wants to know you can tell them straightaway. The Ancient Britons did it in the Domesday Book, and once they knew who there was and where they were . . .” Rabbit paused to catch up with himself, “they could tax them.”
“Why did they want to?” Christopher Robin asked, reasonably enough.
“To pay for the Census, of course,” answered Rabbit. “I thought everybody knew that.”
As word got about, the other animals expressed their doubts.
“It seems to me,” Kanga remarked, “that you can’t count everything.”
Piglet said: “It’s not a Census, it’s a Nonsensus,” and then blushed at his cleverness.
Having announced to the world that a Census was what the Forest needed, Rabbit had no choice but to organize one. His first port of call was Owl’s house. He pulled on the bell-pull, then went in without waiting for an answer.
Owl was toying with a metal puzzle that he had found in his Christmas cracker three years ago, along with a paper hat and a joke about giraffes.
“What is it now, Rabbit?” he complained.
“I have to ask you questions for the Census.”
“Very well. But be quick about it.”
“Name?”
“Owl.”
“Spell it.”
“W-O-L.”
“Age?”
“Mind your own business!”
“Occupation?”
“Enough, Rabbit, enough!”
Owl flapped his wings so crossly that Rabbit flattened his ears and scuttled out of the house.
His next destination was Eeyore’s Gloomy Place where the old grey donkey was standing in the sun, dreaming of being young again in a field of poppies.
“Go away, Rabbit,” he muttered, opening an eye. “I was happy.”
“Happy may be all very well, Eeyore, but it doesn’t butter any parsnips.”
“Then leave them unbuttered,” said Eeyore, and he put his head between his legs, which is the second rudest thing a donkey can do.
“Well, really,” said Rabbit, “some animals!”
But Eeyore had shut his eyes and was trying to get back into the dream.
Next on Rabbit’s list was Christopher Robin, whom he found sketching the Six Pine Trees.
“Hallo, Rabbit. How’s the Census going?”
“Very well, very well, if we exclude certain donkeys. After all, a thing begun is a thing half done.”
Christopher Robin frowned over his sketch.
“I don’t think so, Rabbit. If I begin to read a book that has a hundred pages, I begin on page one but it isn’t half done until I get to page fifty, agreed?”
But Rabbit was not really listening.
“Name?” he asked.
“You know my name,Rabbit,” said Christopher Robin.
“Spell it.”
“I-T,”said Christopher Robin. Then he looked back at his sketch and added a bit of shadow where a shadow ought to be: “Oh, Rabbit, I have better things to do.”
Rabbit went away muttering. It might have been something about No Sense of Social Responsibility, but then again it might not.
At Kanga’s house, Roo and Tigger were playing a game called Licking the Mixing Bowl Clean. It was a game without rules except that the winner was the one who finished last.
“Tigger,” said Rabbit, “let’s begin with you.”
“Yes, let’s,” said Tigger, bouncing a little, even though he had no idea what was to be begun. He liked to be asked to do things, and he liked to be asked to do them first, and he always said “yes” because it is much more interesting when you do.
“Name?”
“Tigger.”
“Spell it.”
“T-I-GRRRRRRRRR . . .” And Tigger emitted a ferocious growl.
“Put your handkerchief in front of your mouth when you do that, dear,” said Kanga.
“Age?”
Tigger counted his paws, and then his whiskers, and then Roo’s paws and whiskers, and then Kanga’s paws and whiskers.
“Don’t know,” he said at last.
“I’ll put down twelve,” said Rabbit.
“Hooray!”cried Tigger. “Then I can have a birthday.” When Rabbit had put all the information from the Census together, he created a chart. He coloured it using a set of crayons that were still in their matching paper wrappers, and then took it along to show Christopher Robin.
“Very fine, Rabbit,” said Christopher Robin, “but why aren’t you on the chart?”
Rabbit stared at the paper.
“Ah,”he said eventually, shuffling his feet. “It was ...” he continued, looking at the floor, “an Oversight.”
“Then you’d better complete the job.”
Rabbit found that answering his own questions was simple enough to start with. How old was he? Five seemed about right.What was his occupation? Rabbit thought for a bit, then wrote “Importent Things.”
Before long, he got to the question about the size of his family. Wherever Rabbit turned there were Friends and Relations. There always had been. But which were
Friends and which were Relations?
Once upon a time he had bought a special diary and tried to jot down all their birthdays, but even for a sensible and organized animal like Rabbit it was more than he could cope with.
So he went to see Grandad Buck, who was Very Ancient and the Head of the Rabbit Family.
Grandad Buck did not entirely approve of Rabbit, partly because he did not entirely approve of anyone, but he listened intently, thought for a few moments, and then said, rather grandly: “My advice to you is to spread the word that all your Friends and Relations are invited to your abode. Promise them food. Then, as they arrive, get their names and ages. That should do the trick.”
He paused, then looked hard at Rabbit, and barked: “Now, young fellow, I must ask you please to go away.”
Rabbit did just as Grandad Buck had advised,promising carrots for Relations and shortbread for Friends. And in due course, on the day selected, Rabbit opened the door at 8.30 A.M. sharp and the first rabbit demanded her shortbread.
“But you’re a relation,” objected Rabbit. “You get carrots.”
The little rabbit put her paws over her floppy ears.
“Am not a Relation! I want shortbread!”
So as not to hold things up, Rabbit gave her a piece. Within an hour he had taken down the details of three hedgehogs, four mice, six squirrels, three beetles, and also twenty-one rabbits—all of whom claimed to be “Friends.” The shortbread from the tin with the picture of Edinburgh Castle on the lid was long gone, and the homemade jam was going the same way. Rabbit was running out of paper, and still the line stretched all the way to Kanga’s house. Many of the younger ones discovered the Sandy Pit in which Roo played, and approved of it and played in it themselves.
The carrots from Rabbit’s garden lay neglected. Friends who had come too late for shortbread became very cross and started rampaging around the place, until Rabbit’s sensible and tidy drawing room was thrown into disarray and covered in muddy and sandy paw-prints everywhere. Some of the younger element invented a game which involved rolling yourself up in the fireside rug with a lace doily on your head and pretending to be sultans and sultanas. The beautiful chart was drawn on with the crayons, which had all been taken out of their tins. The Royal Doulton china was knocked over, and as for the beautiful garden where Rabbit had grown his carrots, it was in severe danger.
“Behave yourselves!” Rabbit cried. “Set an example. Be sensible!”
“But we are your guests and you promised us short bread,” said the rabbits, “and you haven’t got any, so phooey to you with knobs on!”
“Then eat these lovely carrots and behave!” retorted Rabbit shrilly.
But the little rabbits said they were bored with carrots and began to sing: “Why are we waiting?”
“Go on waiting!”shouted Rabbit, who was by now in a Real State.
He rushed out of his house and all the way to Pooh’s house without stopping once. When he’d arrived and gathered his breath sufficiently, he explained what had happened...and then the world seemed to slow down a little as Pooh said comforting things like “There, there, Rabbit,”and“Nevermind, it’s all over now,” (which it probably wasn’t, but that is the kind of thing you should say to a once-sensible Rabbit in distress).
“How about some cocoa and a little smackerel of something?” Pooh suggested. Then, after thinking for a moment he changed this to,“Or just some cocoa, and I’ll eat the something for you, so you won’t be unhealthy?”
But Rabbit seemed very keen on having as mackerel of something too. After eating all the honey and condensed milk that Pooh reluctantly set before him, he sat back with his paws wrapped around the mug of cocoa.
“I thought I was a sensible animal,” Rabbit said, shuddering.
“Of course you are,” said Pooh, “everybody knows that.”
“And it was such a sensible idea, the Census.”
“It’s almost the same word,” agreed Pooh.
“And the gardens, Pooh. Vegetables for everyone.”
“And honey for some,” said Pooh seriously, licking a smear of yellow from the edge of his plate.
Rabbit felt that Pooh had perhaps missed something here, but it seemed too complicated to argue. Instead, he said good night to a surprised Piglet, who had just come in from rolling in the dirt and was a friendly brown colour, and went to bed at midday under Pooh’s own blue cotton counterpane.
When the evening came, Rabbit slept on, but Pooh didn’t mind. He took an old blanket and bedded down by his honey cupboard, to reassure the pots that they would be safe.
In the morning, some slightly sheepish-looking Friends and Relations came knocking on the door. They asked Pooh if he knew where Rabbit was.
“He’s aslee—” Pooh started, then he thought for a bit. He thought of Rabbit, and what Rabbit would say if he were here, and if he were himself again.
“My dear friend Rabbit . . .” started Pooh as importantly as he could. “My very dear friend Rabbit told me to tell you that the job for today is to tidy everything in his house and make it as organdized as possible. Things in rows . . . and . . . and things. Rabbit will supervise us, in case we put stuff back in the wrong places.”
So they all went over to Rabbit’s house, and it took less time than anyone expected to get the place shining clean. While they cleaned and dusted and polished, they each sang their favourite songs, and Piglet sang one he had learned in French from Christopher Robin, about a man called Frère Jacques who spent his time ringing bells. Then, because it was voted the best, he sang it again with all of them joining in the chorus —even Rabbit. Although Owl muttered, “He’s a little off-key.” But nobody noticed or knew what he meant.
