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Summer and Winter Thoughts of the Hare

The hare is eating between some tufts of grass when a snowstorm arrives. To protect himself against the cold he goes under a knoll and digs a hollow. He cuddles up in it but still shivers so much that he shakes.

Now he promises himself that if he is alive next summer he will absolutely make himself a turf hut for the following winter. Then he’ll just be able to crawl into the hut when this kind of weather comes and wait inside in the warmth until the storm is past. Here it’s just too cold; he has to get away, but the weather is so bad that he has nowhere to go. He tries to huddle up alongside a rock, but it’s too cold. Finally the storm passes, but now everything is so snowed over that he can no longer graze. Then he has to gnaw on a twig.

This will not happen again next winter, thinks the hare. When summer comes, I’m going to gather food in a hollow. Then all I’ll have to do is get food from the hiding place and take it into the hut and eat it, the hare promises himself.

And then summer arrives and it’s really hot. The hare doesn’t know what to do in such heat. He crawls down in the shadow of a rock, but it’s just as hot there. He remembers what he promised himself during the winter.

“But who could possibly work in this heat. And next winter won’t be any worse than this past one. I got by then, too,” the hare says. So the hare never builds himself a turf hut.

And when the hare is afraid of something, he just sticks his head under a root and hides himself that way. The hare’s life is so easy.