Judge Fowler knew Clara was not long for the world--it was the manner of how she seized everything that gave her away. Clara was vibrant in youth, beautiful and radiant upon her wedding night beyond compare! But death cannot be masked from those who can see the outline of its features scribbled in the margins of another’s being.

The male rabbits began chattering their teeth against another’s, filling the room with a spastic, scratching sound, similar to a full shift of skate blades on a puck chase, cutting fresh ice.“An animal on a farm has no worth if it isn’t useful. I earned my right to survive--I’m named!

Perhaps Clarence’s knowledge of the enormous day-to-day expense of the war machine was too much for a man who’s own father had insisted, “Never to waste salt on a radish!

When the golden rabbit had safely emerged out of the forbidden passage, he pondered the direction back to his lair. “How can it be I don’t live where I used to live anymore? How can that be? Alright then….alright. What a strange dream…I feel as though I’ve been eaves dropping in tempo…but not in time!” The hare hopped off, humming passages from Miles Davis’ “Kind of Blue”.

Assured that there would be a meal set aside for him somewhere, the beagle pulled his mind off the gnawing emptiness in his stomach, mounted the flattened stump, marched into the center and stood, stock-still, on his vein-coiled, burst of speed legs and gnarled paws--listening!

Judge Fowler imparted to the wedding pair, “Love, knocks ever so lightly and enters our hearts in a whisper. It can sometimes be heard loudest in a glance.

Twilight draped the fertile landscape, like a dampened threadbare sheet, hung over the sun to dry.

Eager toward day!” Striker howled. If Striker could have whistled a tune would have accompanied his ritual salutation, but his teeth were not those of a wandering troubadour, and his own tongue would have been deli sliced at the first “hi-ho”.

Striker counted twenty-eight rabbits pulling the roots at the front of the cage, with at least twenty more rabbits on each side and twenty or so pushing from the back. “I could easily kill them all!” Striker thought, as the ground gave way and everything went dark.