A story about rabbits

One day there was a rabbit, who lived in a burrow. He was a very clever rabbit and very popular too because he had many carrots, which he would always share with his rabbit friends.

For years, Mr Rabbit had been delivered all the carrots he needed, but one day, he looked in his store and realised that he didn’t have quite enough carrots.

“What must I do?”, thought the clever young rabbit to himself, as he rubbed the furry bit between his floppy ears. Mr Rabbit had never before needed to worry about his carrot supply.

In a flash, it came to him. Mr Rabbit, a keen student of far eastern philosophy had on his wall a plaque which read:

“Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day.
Teach a man to fish and you feed him forever”

“I don’t like fish, “ thought he wistfully “but I do like carrots. I will learn to hunt carrots in the wild”

With this thought in mind, Mr Rabbit made his way to the local rabbit university, where he enrolled in course C4RR0T5, “Advanced Carrot capture and torture techniques for rabbits”

While enrolled on the course, Mr Rabbit made many friends and his teachers thought he was wonderful as he seemed to have so many carrots. His project marks were outstanding, as Mr Rabbit was never short of a carrot to hand in. Mr Rabbit was achieving the most outstanding grades the teachers at UCRBIT had ever seen and his work was the talk of all rabbitdom.

But things were not all as they seemed.

Not a single carrot handed in as a project had been Mr Rabbits own work.

The term was nearly at its end and Mr Rabbit’s supply of carrots was nearly exhausted. Every project he handed in was a carrot from his own stores.

Every day, Mr Rabbit would have less and less to eat, but his marks were staying constantly high. The other rabbits still thought he was a genius carrot-catcher, despite the fact he had not ensnared a single carrot in a single trap all year. While the other rabbits toiled with medieval devices, from the car-ROTATOR to the Looping Nail-a-pult with sometimes disastrous results, Mr Rabbit was still no better educated than when he had first entered the class.

The other rabbits, on hearing of Mr Rabbits skills, were now coming over to feast on carrot pie with broccoli gravy every weekend. Mr Rabbit’s carrot and coriander soup was legendary.

The end of term came and the final exam loomed on the horizon. Mr Rabbits storeroom was empty and his chances of passing the final examination with narry a vegetable to his name was slim.

Mr Rabbit failed his final exams and now people laugh when they think of how pathetic he really was. Here was a bright young rabbit with so much potential, whose only sin was to want to be seen to be clever.

While the other rabbits may have failed the small tests, Mr Rabbit never did appreciate the value of that plaque on his wall.