Once there was a curious performance over across the clearing.  I could not see it very plainly, but it looked very much like a boxing match.  A queer sound, put-a-put-a-put-a-put, first drew my attention to it.  Two rabbits were at the edge of the ferns, standing up on their hind legs, face to face, and apparently cuffing each other soundly, while they hopped slowly around and around in a circle.  I could not see the blows but only the boxing attitude, and hear the sounds as they landed on each other’s ribs.  The other rabbits did not seem to mind it, as they would have done had it been a fight, but stopped occasionally to watch the two, and then went on with their fun-making.  Since then I have read of tame hares that did the same thing, but I have never seen it.

At another time the rabbits were gathered together in the very midst of some quiet fun, when they leaped aside suddenly and disappeared among the ferns as if by magic.  The next instant a dark shadow swept across the opening, almost into my face, and wheeled out of sight among the evergreens.  It was Kookoo-skoos, the big brown owl, coursing the woods on his nightly hunt after the very rabbits that were crouched motionless beneath him as he passed.  But how did they learn, all at once, of the coming of an enemy whose march is noiseless as the sweep of a shadow?  And did they all hide so well that he never suspected that they were about, or did he see the ferns wave as the last one disappeared, but was afraid to come back after seeing me?  Perhaps Br’er Rabbit was well repaid that time for his confidence.

They soon came back again, as I think they would not have done had it been a natural opening.  Had it been one of Nature’s own sunny spots, the owl would have swept back and forth across it; for he knows the rabbits’ ways as well as they know his.  But hawks and owls avoid a spot like this, that men have cleared.  If they cross it once in search of prey, they seldom return.  Wherever man camps, he leaves something of himself behind; and the fierce birds and beasts of the woods fear it, and shun it.  It is only the innocent things, singing birds, and fun-loving rabbits, and harmless little wood-mice—­shy, defenseless creatures all—­that take possession of man’s abandoned quarters, and enjoy his protection.  Bunny knows this, I think; and so there is no other place in the woods that he loves so well as an old camping ground.

The play was soon over; for it is only in the early part of the evening, when Br’er Rabbit first comes out after sitting still in his form all day, that he gives himself up to fun, like a boy out of school.  If one may judge, however, from the looks of Simmo’s overalls, and from the number of times he woke me by scurrying around my tent, I suspect that he is never too serious and never too busy for a joke.  It is a way he has of brightening the more sober times of getting his own living, and keeping a sharp lookout for cats and owls and prowling foxes.