Watership Down by Richard Adams

With the school garden starting to take off-- pea and squash plants, beets, carrots all looking healthier each day--I have started to think about predators, namely the rabbits that have been hopping around behind the performing arts building.   I have a feeling they are just waiting for our vegetables to be worth harvesting.  What to do?   Get drawn into an all-out war against the furry raiders?  Nope--it's a reminder that it's time to re-read Watership Down, the timeless classic about a small group of homeless rabbits striving to create a safe place for themselves in a challenging and dangerous world.

Adams has built a complete society in the rabbits of Watership Down,  including a language and an oral tradition with supreme beings and mythic heroes to inform and inspire them.  Hazel is their leader, a determined and wise rabbit who believes that somewhere there can be a peaceful and secure future for those who have joined him.  With his size and martial training, Bigwig provides bravery when it is needed the most.   Other supporting characters include the fierce and powerful Woundwort, who seeks to destroy the band and enslave the survivors; Fiver and Blackberry, who support Hazel with their abilities as seer and problem-solver, respectively; and the does who risk their lives to escape from captivity.  Dangers abound in this quest for a safe home.  Besides Woundwort and his troops, there are the men who plow up the land and patrol their gardens with dogs and guns  and  the non-human hunters--the foxes, cats, and weasels who are an inevitable part of their world.  The rabbits find help in unlikely places, a seagull and a mouse, and throughout their adventures display incredible fortitude, trust, loyalty and courage.

We will still try to discourage the CWA rabbits from excessively raiding our garden, but with Hazel and crew in mind, I think it's possible to look a little more kindly on them.  Who knows what stories they have to tell?