The Beginning of a New Dream

A conspiracy theory about how Snow Ears was acquitted from the accusation of Mrs. Mouse’s murder spread through the forest like wildfire. Old court and police records were sniffed and read by information seekers, and more discussion groups were started. Louise the mountain lion’s tree trunk became the most popular site, for she had a knack for churning out new tit-bits about Snow Ears which most animals had either forgotten or had never heard of before.

As soon as she got the whole forest’s attention, Louise began putting up comments like “Someone powerful is protecting Snow Ears”, “There is a conspiracy within SHRARE”, “SHRARE claims to save lives but 680 animals have been mauled since its formation.”, “Statistics proved that animals who are not under attack has a higher rate of survival, proving that SHRARE’s claim is a fraud.”

On and on it went. Birds who worked for SHRARE were questioned by some curious animals and a few revealed that they were given a chirping quota each day. Hence even if no predator was in sight, they were encouraged to chirp out warnings, so they could meet their quotas.

When Snow Ears was confronted about this he said, “That is not true! The birds are paid on a per-chirp basis. We don’t give them a quota. They earn as much or as little as they want, according to their own diligence and hardwork.”

Then some birds admitted to having taken money from predators and selling off the life of their clients. Bruce led the herbivores’ march to the front of Snow Ears’s burrow to confront him about the issue.

“Come out you coward,” the mountain lion roared. “Come out and face the animals you have cheated.”

But when Snow Ears poked his head out of the burrow-hole, a wild dog threw a rock at him. As though on cue, a band of young monkeys began pelting his burrow with twigs, mud, rock and feces. The shouts and hollers crescendo-ed into stomps and fights which forced frightened neighbors to call for the riot police to disperse the crowd. By the time the area had reached some semblance of peace, the rioters saw that Snow Ears’s burrow had been trampled and leveled to the ground, but Snow Ears was nowhere to be found.

A week later, Scales took over SHRARE and promised the forest animals that he would put a system in place to control fraud. Animals continue to disappear but nobody complained because Scales was doing a far better job than the rabbits. He even changed the name Super Hares and Rabbits Association of Relevant Entropy to Data Retrieval Information Package or DRIP. The forest trunks began to fill with happy news and modern trends, and soon all negative writers had stopped showing up at their sites.

Snow Ears dug through the garbage that had overflowed onto the pavement. He was glad to have found the Chinese Restaurant in the middle of the city because they cooked a lot of cabbage and threw away the stems. Sometimes he would even find week-old tender leaves. The cats used to scratch him but once they understood that he only wanted the vegetables they left him alone. Now, he only had the rats to worry about.

It was cold that night though, and the rain had not stopped for three days. After two mouthfuls of rotten cabbage, Snow Ears dragged himself away from the bin. He was too tired to try to bother looking for a shelter, so he huddled next to a lamp post. It was so hard to breath. A car passed and splashed water on him, but he did not move, for he was too far gone to care.

It grew colder and colder and colder. Then warmer by the minute. Snow Ears yawned, opened his eyes and found himself back in the forest. He felt so energized by his rest he began running and hopping to his heart’s content. Then he tripped and rolled down a hill with butterflies chasing after him. At the foot of the hill, a woman as tall as an ancient redwood picked him up and sat him on one of her thousand fingers.

“Who are you, lady?” he asked.

“I am you,” she said.

“But I am a rabbit. I am small.”

“No. You are a giant, because you always do what is right.”

“What will happen to me now?”

“You will go where everyone does everything that is right.”

She smiled and kissed him, and he found himself in a path of flowering green with numerous laughing rabbits, though far in between, and fluttering butterflies with colors like jewels. Then he looked to his left, his right and all about him, amazed because for as far as his eyes could see from horizon to horizon, was the biggest and most wonderful cabbage field.

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