The Big Snow 209 



Baker cheerfully furnished powder and shot — 

 it was the cheapest way of saving his young 

 trees in the orchard. Notwithstanding, he did 

 not trust wholly to it. The day after the snow, 

 he had all the trunks rubbed for three feet up, 

 either with fresh bloody fat, or the skins and 

 entrails of the first rabbits slaughtered. 



Brer Rabbit looks a pattern of innocence, 

 but like many another pattern person, belies 

 his looks. He is really a standing menace to 

 the prosperity of the farm lands. The menace 

 lies in his amazing faculty of multiplying him- 

 self by a million in a very little while. Under 

 favoring conditions rabbits litter many times 

 in a year. Litters run from three to six in , 

 number, and the young are full-grown at six 

 months old. Figure a bit and you will under- 

 stand how a homesick settler's chance turning 

 loose of half a dozen rabbits, less than fifty 

 years back, has brought about Australia's rab- 

 bit plague, whose damage must be reckoned 

 in the hundred millions. Like the locusts 

 of Egypt, rabbits devour every green thing — 

 unless the green thing has a protective animal 

 taint. Then even starvation will not make 

 them touch the tainted stuff — especially if 

 the taint comes from their own flesh. 



That is lucky for the orchards and the 

 gardens. Brer Rabbit dearly loves the smooth 

 bark of young apple trees, and upon a pinch 



