Rabbit Hunting Quotes

What is that?" "A hunt," Puck replied, looking off into the distance. He grimaced. "You know, I was just thinking we needed to be run down like rabbits and torn apart. My day just isn't complete without something trying to kill me." -Puck

Individual humans know embarrassingly little about the world, and as history has progressed, they have come to know less and less. A hunter-gatherer in the Stone Age knew how to make her own clothes, how to start a fire, how to hunt rabbits, and how to escape lions. We think we know far more today, but as individuals, we actually know far less. We rely on the expertise of others for almost all our needs.

Somewhere someone thinks they love someone else exactly like I love you. Somewhere someone shakes from the ripple of a thousand butterflies inside a single stomach. Somewhere someone is packing their bags to see the world with someone else. Somewhere someone is reaching through the most terrifying few feet of space to hold the hand of someone else. Somewhere someone is watching someone else’s chest rise and fall with the breath of slumber. Somewhere someone is pouring ink like blood onto pages fighting to say the truth that has no words. Somewhere someone is waiting patient but exhausted to just be with someone else. Somewhere someone is opening their eyes to a sunrise in someplace they have never seen. Somewhere someone is pulling out the petals twisting the apple stem picking up the heads up penny rubbing the rabbits foot knocking on wood throwing coins into fountains hunting for the only clover with only 4 leaves skipping over the cracks snapping the wishbone crossing their fingers blowing out the candles sending dandelion seeds into the air ushering eyelashes off their thumbs finding the first star and waiting for 11:11 on their clock to spend their wishes on someone else. Somewhere someone is saying goodbye but somewhere someone else is saying hello. Somewhere someone is sharing their first or their last kiss with their or no longer their someone else. Somewhere someone is wondering if how they feel is how the other they feels about them and if both theys could ever become a they together. Somewhere someone is the decoder ring to all of the great mysteries of life for someone else. Somewhere someone is the treasure map. Somewhere someone thinks they love someone else exactly like I love you. Somewhere someone is wrong.

Women, fire in their crotch, won't burn out, begin by fighting off pricks, end by going wild hunting for one that still works.

The dog hunts rabbits. Hercule Poirot hunts murderers.

Lipstick?" He arched a brow. "I'm on the hunt for my perfect shade," I respond, deadpan. "Ditch the magenta. Your olive skin screams for rose." His deadpan is better than mine.

Unicorns are immortal. It is their nature to live alone in one place: usually a forest where there is a pool clear enough for them to see themselves-for they are a little vain, knowing themselves to be the most beautiful creatures in all the world, and magic besides. They mate very rarely, and no place is more enchanted than one where a unicorn has been born. The last time she had seen another unicorn the young virgins who still came seeking her now and then had called to her in a different tongue; but then, she had no idea of months and years and centuries, or even of seasons. It was always spring in her forest, because she lived there, and she wandered all day among the great beech trees, keeping watch over the animals that lived in the ground and under bushes, in nests and caves, earths and treetops. Generation after generation, wolves and rabbits alike, they hunted and loved and had children and died, and as the unicorn did none of these things, she never grew tired of watching them.

A lioness will use all of her strength even when hunting a rabbit.

Look at the tyranny of party-- at what is called party allegiance, party loyalty-- a snare invented by designing men for selfish purposes-- and which turns voters into chattels, slaves, rabbits; and all the while, their masters, and they themselves are shouting rubbish about liberty, independence, freedom of opinion, freedom of speech, honestly unconscious of the fantastic contradiction; and forgetting or ignoring that their fathers and the churches shouted the same blasphemies a generation earlier when they were closing thier doors against the hunted slave, beating his handful of humane defenders with Bible-texts and billies, and pocketing the insults nad licking the shoes of his Southern master.

The fact that Ben retained Cavendish shows how seriously he took the matter; you don’t hunt rabbits with an elephant gun.

When she came back minutes later with a great, fat, skinned rabbit, Po had built a fire. The flames cast orange light on the horses and on himself. "It was the least I could do," Po said, drily, "and I see you've already skinned the hare. I'm beginning to think I won't have much responsibility as we travel through the forest together." "Does it other you? You're welcome to do the hunting yourself. Perhaps I can stay by the fire and mend your socks, and scream if I hear strange noises.

Suddenly I don’t feel so bad at being rescued by a rabbit,

Men spend their time in following a ball or a hare; it is the pleasure even of kings.

Running. She was always running. Like a rabbit chased by coywolv. Always hunting for some new safe bolt hole, and every time, the soldier boys found her, and forced her to rabbit again. The doctor was wrong. There was no place to hide, and she’d never be safe as long as she remained close to the Drowned Cities.

When I am billeted a German home even for one night I go out and search for the chickens and rabbits or pets and give them water and food if possible. Generally the family has pulled out too rapidly to care for such things. I suppose the stern and the cruel ones rule the world. If so, I shall be content to try to live each day within the limits of my conscience and let great plaudits go to those who are willing to pay the price for it.

How do you hunt a unique rabbit? Unique up on it.

but long before Bobby got to the end of the story he knew there would be no farms and no rabbits for George and Lennie. Why? Because people needed a beast to hunt. They found a Ralph or a Piggy or a big stupid hulk of a Lennie and then they turned into low men. They put on their yellow coats, they sharpened a stick at both ends, and then they went hunting. But

It was as easy as breathing to go and have tea near the place where Jane Austen had so wittily scribbled and so painfully died. One of the things that causes some critics to marvel at Miss Austen is the laconic way in which, as a daughter of the epoch that saw the Napoleonic Wars, she contrives like a Greek dramatist to keep it off the stage while she concentrates on the human factor. I think this comes close to affectation on the part of some of her admirers. Captain Frederick Wentworth in Persuasion, for example, is partly of interest to the female sex because of the 'prize' loot he has extracted from his encounters with Bonaparte's navy. Still, as one born after Hiroshima I can testify that a small Hampshire township, however large the number of names of the fallen on its village-green war memorial, is more than a world away from any unpleasantness on the European mainland or the high or narrow seas that lie between. (I used to love the detail that Hampshire's 'New Forest' is so called because it was only planted for the hunt in the late eleventh century.) I remember watching with my father and brother through the fence of Stanstead House, the Sussex mansion of the Earl of Bessborough, one evening in the early 1960s, and seeing an immense golden meadow carpeted entirely by grazing rabbits. I'll never keep that quiet, or be that still, again. This was around the time of countrywide protest against the introduction of a horrible laboratory-confected disease, named 'myxomatosis,' into the warrens of old England to keep down the number of nibbling rodents. Richard Adams's lapine masterpiece Watership Down is the remarkable work that it is, not merely because it evokes the world of hedgerows and chalk-downs and streams and spinneys better than anything since The Wind in the Willows, but because it is only really possible to imagine gassing and massacre and organized cruelty on this ancient and green and gently rounded landscape if it is organized and carried out against herbivores.

Everything about the hawk is tuned and turned to hunt and kill. Yesterday I discovered that when I suck air through my teeth and make a squeaking noise like an injured rabbit, all the tendons in her toes instantaneously contract, driving her talons into the glove with terrible, crushing force. This killing grip is an old, deep pattern in her brain, an innate response that hasn't yet found the stimulus meant to release it. Because other sounds provoke it: door hinges, squealing breaks, bicycles with unoiled wheels - and on the second afternoon, Joan Sutherland singing an aria on the radio. Ow. I laughed out loud at that. Stimulus: opera. Response: kill.

Liberation My mind is clouded, I cannot hunt anymore. I lay my gun over the tracks of the rabbit. It was as though I became that creature who could not decide whether to flee or be still and so was trapped in the pursuer's eyes- And for the first time I knew those eyes have to be blank because it is impossible to kill and question at the same time. Then the shutter snapped, the rabbit went free. He flew through the empty forest that part of me that was the victim. Only victims have a destiny. And the hunter, who believed whatever struggles begs to be torn apart: that part is paralyzed.

What sense does it make that one god would create all? Why would he create … rabbits. Soft and cuddly, yes? And then create foxes that hunt them down and tear them to shreds? Why do that? That god is no god to the rabbits. He is a demon that favors their enemies. But nor does that god honor the fox, for he creates other animals bigger than it. Creates wolves. Creates you Acacians. Even you, Rialus, could kill a fox if you were lucky and had the right weapon.” “And if the creature was lame or old,” Jàfith added.

Don’t thank me yet, Bunny,” I tell her softly, despite knowing she’s already passed out. “I’m the hunter in this story and I’m hunting rabbit.

It’s called a bar, and judging from the look of it, I think you fell down the wrong rabbit hole, Alice. Wonderland isn’t here.

One who hunts rabbits cannot boast to one who hunts lions.

I give you this life so that you may seize every opportunity that comes before you, like a rabbit waiting to be hunted. I give you the strength to act without fear or hesitation.

For a split moment, time stopped as I was faced with the rugged beauty of my mother. There she stood in her tattered dress, her bare feet almost completely buried in the sand. Across her shoulder lay two skinned rabbits, which she had captured for us to eat. In her hand, she carried a single, tallow candle, which was stubbornly sparking its fire into the sky.

Don’t build a cabin near a termite colony. Don’t rear rabbits near wolves. Don’t attack a cub in front of its mother. Don’t stone a bird you want to catch. Don’t pick a flower before it blooms. Don’t pick fruit before it sweetens. Don’t count game you have not caught. Don’t hunt with a blunt spear. Don’t fish in poisoned waters. Don’t close your eyes near a predator.

Individual humans know embarrassingly little about the world, and as history progressed, they came to know less and less. A hunter-gatherer in the Stone Age knew how to make her own clothes, how to start a fire, how to hunt rabbits and how to escape lions. We think we know far more today, but as individuals, we actually know far less. We rely on the expertise of others for almost all our needs. In one humbling experiment, people were asked to evaluate how well they understood the workings of an ordinary zip. Most people confidently replied that they understood them very well – after all, they use zips all the time. They were then asked to describe in as much detail as possible all the steps involved in the zip’s operation. Most had no idea.2 This is what Steven Sloman and Philip Fernbach have termed ‘the knowledge illusion’. We think we know a lot, even though individually we know very little, because we treat knowledge in the minds of others as if it were our own.

Cold wind,” I began. He looked at me as if I’d said something important. Then he said, “It’s more than wind,” and stared ahead of him again. “Maybe,” I said. I didn’t get his drift, but if he wanted to talk, “maybe” shouldn’t stop him. “It’s a lot more,” he said, as if I’d contradicted him. “You can’t go hunting men like coyotes after rabbits and not feel anything about it. Not without being like any other animal. The worst animal.” “There’s a difference; we have reasons.” “Names for the same thing,” he said sharply. “Does that make us any better? Worse, I’d say. At least coyotes don’t make excuses.

... as a convention, you get up and walk to the window to make the audience believe that you're looking out. It's for the audience, not for you! And what it means to you is something emotional [...] If you went to the Actors Studio you'd spend six months seeing the snow before you could say, 'Look at the snow.' This takes a terrible burden away from the actor, who thinks he's got to see the woods and the snow. 'Give me my gun! I see a rabbit! Give me my gun!' " Meisner sounds thrilled at the possibility of a hunt. "That happens when you're still sitting there reading. Then when they put in the scenery you move to the window. Isn't that simple? How simple it is to solve the problem of seeing things when you know that it's all in you emotionally, and that walking to the window is only a convention.

A hunter-gatherer in the Stone Age knew how to make her own clothes, how to start a fire, how to hunt rabbits, and how to escape lions. We think we know far more today, but as individuals, we actually know far less.

Cecily peers at the murky grey liquid and frowns at a cube of meat that's floating against the rim. "What was this in a past life?" she asks. "Pigeons and a field rabbit," Reed says. "Hunted them down myself." "He's an excellent shot," Linden says. "Can you eat pigeons, though?" Cecily falls back into her chair, looking a mix of disgusted and curious. "You can eat just about anything," Reed says, dumping a ladleful into her bowl.

Last night I dreamed of the "happy hunting ground." I passed through a place of bones that looked human, but weren't--the skulls were wrong. Then I came to a place where the days were the best of every season, the sweetest air and water in spring, then the dry heat where deer make dust in the road, the fog of fall with good leaves. And you could shoot without a gun, never kill, but the rabbits would do a little dance, all as if it were a game, and they were playing it too. Then winter came with heavy powder-snow, and big deer, horses, goats and buffaloes--all white--snorted, tossed their heads, and I lay down with my Army blanket, made my bed in the snow, then dreamed within the dream. I dreamed I was at Fleety's, and she told me the bones were poor people killed by bandits, and she took me back to the place, and under a huge rock where no light should have shown, a cave almost, was a dogwood tree. It glowed the kind of red those trees get at sundown, the buds were purple in that weird light, and a madman came out with an axe and chopped at the skulls, trying to make them human-looking. Then I went back to the other side of both dreams. --from a letter to his mother, Helen Pancake, where he describes a dream that seems to encapsulate the play between violence and gentleness in his life.

When your body is clear there is control. When your body is clear you can choose whom to let in. There is love everywhere. Please cradle my rabbit heart. Please navigate yourself around me well. I know too much. I can recognize darkness because he is my brother, my maker. I can drink lightness because it is the only way to survive. I can shut off my heart but that leads to evil, so I express her and revel in the nuance of blood currents, and the sacred demons. I fear and quake with my eyes darting fight or flight love or die. The lightning comes from below this time and rips out of my throat for the world to see. They all see my rabbit and I have trained her to hunt. In her perfect glory she is shy and extroverted, chaste and perverted, my sweet near-death more alive than ever. Take her. Take me while I am ripe and open, rub berries on my lips and bear fat in my hair. Tattoo me with a needle and impale me with your warmth. Heal me, fuck me, and work my heart till she beats strong and unafraid. Haunches bared, teeth sharpened, wide-eyed and aware. Hurry. I want to feel safe.

Mother?” I rested one hand on the doorpost, with its carved pattern of palm branches. “Mother, will you teach me how to hunt?” She gave me a strange look. “Gladly. But why?” “Because if I do choose to go back to the training ground and Father finds out and wants me to stop, I want to bring him a whole cauldron of stewed rabbit so he’ll change his mind.” When Mother stopped laughing, she took me outside, off into the olive grove, and gave me my first archery lesson. I didn’t hit anything, but as Mother told me (with a perfectly straight face), I did manage to scare the olives off a couple of trees.

A pack of coyotes set up a sudden racket near the house, yipping and howling, so close by they sounded like they had us surrounded. When a hunting pack corners a rabbit they go into a blood frenzy, making human-sounding screams. The baby sighed and stirred in his crib. At seven months, he was just the size of a big jackrabbit--the same amount of meat. The back of my scalp and neck prickled. It's an involuntary muscle contraction that causes that, setting the hair follicles on edge; if we had manes they would bristle like a growling dog's. We're animals. We're born like every other mammal and we live our whole lives around disguised animal thoughts.

Think for a moment about the Agricultural Revolution from the viewpoint of wheat. Ten thousand years ago wheat was just a wild grass, one of many, confined to a small range in the Middle East. Suddenly, within just a few short millennia, it was growing all over the world. According to the basic evolutionary criteria of survival and reproduction, wheat has become one of the most successful plants in the history of the earth. In areas such as the Great Plains of North America, where not a single wheat stalk grew 10,000 years ago, you can today walk for hundreds upon hundreds of miles without encountering any other plant. Worldwide, wheat covers about 870,000 square miles of the globe’s surface, almost ten times the size of Britain. How did this grass turn from insignificant to ubiquitous? Wheat did it by manipulating Homo sapiens to its advantage. This ape had been living a fairly comfortable life hunting and gathering until about 10,000 years ago, but then began to invest more and more effort in cultivating wheat. Within a couple of millennia, humans in many parts of the world were doing little from dawn to dusk other than taking care of wheat plants. It wasn’t easy. Wheat demanded a lot of them. Wheat didn’t like rocks and pebbles, so Sapiens broke their backs clearing fields. Wheat didn’t like sharing its space, water and nutrients with other plants, so men and women laboured long days weeding under the scorching sun. Wheat got sick, so Sapiens had to keep a watch out for worms and blight. Wheat was attacked by rabbits and locust swarms, so the farmers built fences and stood guard over the fields. Wheat was thirsty, so humans dug irrigation canals or lugged heavy buckets from the well to water it. Sapiens even collected animal faeces to nourish the ground in which wheat grew.

The joy of killing! the joy of seeing killing done--these are traits of the human race at large. We white people are merely modified Thugs; Thugs fretting under the restraints of a not very thick skin of civilization; Thugs who long ago enjoyed the slaughter of the Roman arena, and later the burning of doubtful Christians by authentic Christians in the public squares, and who now, with the Thugs of Spain and Nimes, flock to enjoy the blood and misery of the bull-ring. We have no tourists of either sex or any religion who are able to resist the delights of the bull-ring when opportunity offers; and we are gentle Thugs in the hunting-season, and love to chase a tame rabbit and kill it. Still, we have made some progress--microscopic, and in truth scarcely worth mentioning, and certainly nothing to be proud of--still it is progress: we no longer take pleasure in slaughtering or burning helpless men. We have reached a little altitude where we may look down upon the Indian Thugs with a complacent shudder; and we may even hope for a day, many centuries hence, when our posterity will look down upon us in the same way.

Oh, we’re smart,” he said, the same way. “It’s the same thing,” he cried; “all we use it for is power. Yes, we’ve got them scared all right, all of them, except the tame things we’ve taken the souls out of. We’re the cocks of the dung-heap, all right; the bullies of the globe.” “We’re not hunting rabbits tonight,” I reminded him. “No; our own kind. A wolf wouldn’t do that; not a mangy coyote. That’s the hunting we like now, our own kind. The rest can’t excite us any more.” “We don’t have to hunt men often,” I told him. “Most people never have. They get along pretty well together.” “Oh, we love each other,” he said. “We labor for each other, suffer for each other, admire each other. We have all the pack instincts, all right, and nice names for them.

Individual humans know embarrassingly little about the world, and as history progressed, they came to know less and less. A hunter-gatherer in the Stone Age knew how to make her own clothes, how to start a fire, how to hunt rabbits and how to escape lions. We think we know far more today, but as individuals, we actually know far less. We rely on the expertise of others for almost all our needs. (page 136)

but when the Rabbit actually took a watch out of its waistcoat-pocket, and looked at it, and then hurried on, Alice started to her feet, for it flashed across her mind that she had never before seen a rabbit with either a waistcoat-pocket, or a watch to take out of it, and burning with curiosity, she ran across the field after it, and fortunately was just in time to see it pop down a large rabbit-hole under the hedge.

Nevertheless, there are many respects, in tiny and contemptible matters, where our curiosity is provoked every day. How often do we slip, who can count? How many times we initially act as if we put up with people telling idle tales in order not to offend the weak, but then gradually we find pleasure in listening. I now do not watch a dog chase a rabbit when this is happening at the circus. But if by chance I am passing when coursing occurs in the countryside, it distracts me perhaps indeed from thinking out some weighty matter. The hunt turns me to an interest in the sport, not enough to lead me to alter the direction of the beast I am riding, but shifting the inclination of my heart. Unless you had proved to me my infirmity and quickly admonished me either to take the sight as the start for some reflection enabling me to rise up to you or wholly to scorn and pass the matter by, I would be watching like an empty-headed fool. When I am sitting at home, a lizard catching flies or a spider entrapping them as they rush into its web often fascinates me. The problem is not made any different by the fact that the animals are small. The sight leads me on to praise you, the marvellous Creator and orderer of all things; but that was not how my attention first began. It is one thing to rise rapidly, another thing not to fall.

You might want to know that my dad taught me to shoot so that I could hunt with him, which I’ve been doin’ since I was a kid. I can kill a pheasant in flight. I can kill a rabbit running for its burrow. I’ve even shot a squirrel scrambling up a great big ol’ oak. So, I can damn sure hit your knee from a few feet away. Now, you and your boys need to back the fuck away from our truck, or I will happily give you tangible proof that I am indeed an excellent shot.

How did this grass turn from insignificant to ubiquitous? Wheat did it by manipulating Homo sapiens to its advantage. This ape had been living a fairly comfortable life hunting and gathering until about 10,000 years ago, but then began to invest more and more effort in cultivating wheat. Within a couple of millennia, humans in many parts of the world were doing little from dawn to dusk other than taking care of wheat plants. It wasn’t easy. Wheat demanded a lot of them. Wheat didn’t like rocks and pebbles, so Sapiens broke their backs clearing fields. Wheat didn’t like sharing its space, water and nutrients with other plants, so men and women laboured long days weeding under the scorching sun. Wheat got sick, so Sapiens had to keep a watch out for worms and blight. Wheat was attacked by rabbits and locust swarms, so the farmers built fences and stood guard over the fields. Wheat was thirsty, so humans dug irrigation canals or lugged heavy buckets from the well to water it. Sapiens even collected animal faeces to nourish the ground in which wheat grew.

The old men had a set rabbit-hunting strategy that they had always used. Usually when a dog jumps a rabbit, and the rabbit gets away, that rabbit will always somehow instinctively run in a circle and return sooner or later past the very spot where he originally was jumped. Well, the old men would just sit and wait in hiding somewhere for the rabbit to come back, then get their shots at him. I got to thinking about it, and finally I thought of a plan. I would separate from them and Big Boy and I would go to a point where I figured that the rabbit, returning, would have to pass me first. It worked like magic. I began to get three and four rabbits before they got one. The astonishing thing was that none of the old men ever figured out why. They outdid themselves exclaiming what a sure shot I was. I was about twelve, then. All I had done was to improve on their strategy, and it was the beginning of a very important lesson in life—that anytime you find someone more successful than you are, especially when you’re both engaged in the same business—you know they’re doing something that you aren’t.

Putting the question to one side for a moment, the human experiment can be labelled as… disappointing. But as a species, we are, at times, exceedingly vulnerable. Our vulnerability lies in the inability to understand life and its purpose. We hunt for the tools to make sense of it all: religion, science, politics, sport, the theatre. We explore and search for meaning by discovering new worlds and climbing mountains, and a great many of us find tremendous solace and comfort in these activities, but the one thing that is absolutely certain is that we are born and that we will die. The rest is propaganda.

In the moments before my eyes shut, hearing Frick snore and the clock tick toward 4:00 AM, I felt like I knew Robbie, felt like I had memories of him where he took me fishing or hunting, and when I couldn’t take the fish off the hook or when I couldn’t kill the white rabbit, he told me that was fine, and he unhooked the fish—it’s jaw popping, gills throbbing—and plopped it into the river, or he took the rifle from my hands, and after all that we walked away through mud or snow until I stopped walking but he kept on going and going and going out there in quiet strides through a dark-pined forest until he was gone.

We became ruthless with the Arab,” a 1st Division soldier wrote. “If we found them where they were not to be, they were open game, much as rabbits in the States during hunting season.” Another soldier explained: “Here Arabs live all over. Some we shoot on sight, some we search, and some we make a deal with to buy eggs and chickens.” Soldiers boasted of using natives for marksmanship practice, daring one another to shoot an Arab coming over a hill like a target in an arcade. Others fired at camels to see the riders bucked off, or shot at the feet of Arab children “to watch them dance in fear,” as one 34th Division soldier recounted. At

I was like a hare being stalked by a hungry wolf. He didn’t go straight for the kill. That would have been too easy. Instead he waited it out, stalking his prey in the shadows. He would bare those large, sharp teeth and the prey would be oblivious to the threat right in front of them. Once the rabbit could finally see the wolf for what it really was, it was too late. The wolf already had his jaw locked against the rabbit’s throat. It couldn’t go nowhere. It was completely helpless to the wolfs punishing grip. No matter how much the rabbit fought or how much the rabbit struggled, it couldn’t escape. I’ve found my very own wolf and I can do nothing but stare into his hungry eyes.

eagerness. The front man turned his head until his eyes met the eyes of the man behind. And then, across the narrow oblong box, each nodded to the other. A second cry arose, piercing the silence with needle-like shrillness. Both men located the sound. It was to the rear, somewhere in the snow expanse they had just traversed. A third and answering cry arose, also to the rear and to the left of the second cry. “They’re after us, Bill,” said the man at the front. His voice sounded hoarse and unreal, and he had spoken with apparent effort. “Meat is scarce,” answered his comrade. “I ain’t seen a rabbit sign for days.” Thereafter they spoke no more, though their ears were keen for the hunting-cries that continued to rise behind them. At the fall of darkness, they swung the dogs into a cluster of spruce trees on the edge of the

Individual humans know embarrassingly little about the world, and as history progressed, they came to know less and less. A hunter-gatherer in the Stone Age knew how to make her own clothes, how to start a fire, how to hunt rabbits and how to escape lions. We think we know far more today, but as individuals, we actually know far less. We rely on the expertise of others for almost all our needs. In one humbling experiment, people were asked to evaluate how well they understood the workings of an ordinary zip. Most people confidently replied that they understood them very well - after all, they use zips all the time. They were then asked to describe in as much detail as possible all the steps involved in the zip's operation. Most had no idea. This is what Steven Sloman and Philip Fernbach have termed 'the knowledge illusion'. We think we know a lot, even though individually we know very little, because we treat knowledge in the minds of others as if it were our own.

Wheat did it by manipulating Homo sapiens to its advantage. This ape had been living a fairly comfortable life hunting and gathering until about 10,000 years ago, but then began to invest more and more effort in cultivating wheat. Within a couple of millennia, humans in many parts of the world were doing little from dawn to dusk other than taking care of wheat plants. It wasn’t easy. Wheat demanded a lot of them. Wheat didn’t like rocks and pebbles, so Sapiens broke their backs clearing fields. Wheat didn’t like sharing its space, water and nutrients with other plants, so men and women laboured long days weeding under the scorching sun. Wheat got sick, so Sapiens had to keep a watch out for worms and blight. Wheat was attacked by rabbits and locust swarms, so the farmers built fences and stood guard over the fields. Wheat was thirsty, so humans dug irrigation canals or lugged heavy buckets from the well to water it. Sapiens even collected animal faeces to nourish the ground in which wheat grew.

It takes no skill to find a bald eagle. You look for flat rabbits on country roads. Wait a while and the national emblem will appear, menace anything that got there first, and plunge his majestic head deep in a mass of entrails. Alternatively, you can follow some industrious hawk through swamp or bottomland forest until he dispatches a squirrel; an eagle is likely to descend, savage the smaller bird, and steal his prize. The eagle can hunt, of course; he just prefers not to. Benjamin Franklin called him a bird of bad moral character. It takes no skill to find the nest, either. Look for a shipwreck in a tree, layered in feces . . . The likeliest impediment to (the eagles’) reproductive success was a human observer bungling around twice a day, but their welfare was almost incidental anyway. The point was for patriotic human hearts to swell with pride on outdoor weekends, and convincing replicas would have sufficed; the compulsive monitoring was not good husbandry, just an expression of national guilt. I did what I was paid for. Privately I sided with the furred and feathered residents of the area who must have wondered why humans were loosing winged hyenas in their midst . . . They’re glorified vultures. An apex predator that never hunts. Absurd.

I hope you don’t mind that we’re crashing,” Wes says. “I’m trying to escape a hunting expedition. No joke. Dad thinks I’ll be more of a man if I can blow a rabbit’s head off. And my response? ‘Sorry, Dad, but as tempting as it is to obliterate Peter Cottontail first thing on a Sunday morning, I promised Camelia I’d swing by her house, because she’s been begging to abuse my body for weeks.’” “And speaking of being delusional,” Kimmie segues, “did I mention that my plan to reunite my parents was totally dumb?” She leads us into my bedroom and then closes the door behind her. “They could smell the setup before their water glasses were even filled.” “How’s that?” I ask, taking a seat on my bed. “The violinist I arranged to serenade them at the table might have been a tip-off,” she begins. “Either that, or the wrist corsage I ordered for my mom. I handpicked the begonias and had the florist deliver it right to the table.” “Don’t forget about the oyster appetizer you preordered for the occasion,” Wes adds. “Because, you know what they say about oysters, right?” An evil grin breaks out across her face. ‘I know, I know.” She sighs, before I can even say anything. “I may have gone a little overboard, but what can I say? I’m a dorkus extremus. Hence my outit du jour.” She’s wearing a Catholic schoolgirl’s uniform, a pair of clunky black glasses (with the requisite amount of tape on the bridge), and a cone-shaped dunce cap. “Yes, but you’re a dorkus extremus with a nice set of begonias,” Wes teases.

Wheat did it by manipulating Homo sapiens to its advantage. This ape had been living a fairly comfortable life hunting and gathering until about 10,000 years ago, but then began to invest more and more effort in cultivating wheat. Within a couple of millennia, humans in many parts of the world were doing little from dawn to dusk other than taking care of wheat plants. It wasn’t easy. Wheat demanded a lot of them. Wheat didn’t like rocks and pebbles, so Sapiens broke their backs clearing fields. Wheat didn’t like sharing its space, water and nutrients with other plants, so men and women laboured long days weeding under the scorching sun. Wheat got sick, so Sapiens had to keep a watch out for worms and blight. Wheat was attacked by rabbits and locust swarms, so the farmers built fences and stood guard over the fields. Wheat was thirsty, so humans dug irrigation canals or lugged heavy buckets from the well to water it. Sapiens even collected animal faeces to nourish the ground in which wheat grew. The body of Homo sapiens had not evolved for such tasks. It was adapted to climbing apple trees and running after gazelles, not to clearing rocks and carrying water buckets. Human spines, knees, necks and arches paid the price. Studies of ancient skeletons indicate that the transition to agriculture brought about a plethora of ailments, such as slipped discs, arthritis and hernias. Moreover, the new agricultural tasks demanded so much time that people were forced to settle permanently next to their wheat fields. This completely changed their way of life. We did not domesticate wheat. It domesticated us. The word ‘domesticate’ comes from the Latin domus, which means ‘house’. Who’s the one living in a house? Not the wheat. It’s the Sapiens.

Think for a moment about the Agricultural Revolution from the viewpoint of wheat. Ten thousand years ago wheat was just a wild grass, one of many, confined to a small range in the Middle East. Suddenly, within just a few short millennia, it was growing all over the world. According to the basic evolutionary criteria of survival and reproduction, wheat has become one of the most successful plants in the history of the earth. In areas such as the Great Plains of North America, where not a single wheat stalk grew 10,000 years ago, you can today walk for hundreds upon hundreds of kilometres without encountering any other plant. Worldwide, wheat covers about 2.25 million square kilometres of the globe’s surface, almost ten times the size of Britain. How did this grass turn from insignificant to ubiquitous? Wheat did it by manipulating Homo sapiens to its advantage. This ape had been living a fairly comfortable life hunting and gathering until about 10,000 years ago, but then began to invest more and more effort in cultivating wheat. Within a couple of millennia, humans in many parts of the world were doing little from dawn to dusk other than taking care of wheat plants. It wasn’t easy. Wheat demanded a lot of them. Wheat didn’t like rocks and pebbles, so Sapiens broke their backs clearing fields. Wheat didn’t like sharing its space, water and nutrients with other plants, so men and women laboured long days weeding under the scorching sun. Wheat got sick, so Sapiens had to keep a watch out for worms and blight. Wheat was attacked by rabbits and locust swarms, so the farmers built fences and stood guard over the fields. Wheat was thirsty, so humans dug irrigation canals or lugged heavy buckets from the well to water it. Sapiens even collected animal faeces to nourish the ground in which wheat grew. The

Nothing,” said Margaret. “So there once was an Indian chief with three daughters, or squaws. All the braves in the tribe wanted to marry them, so he decided to hold a contest—all the braves would go out hunting, and the three who brought back the best hides would get to marry his squaws.” “Everyone knows this one,” said Lauren, rolling her eyes. “I don’t,” said Mom. I didn’t either. “Then I’ll keep going,” said Margaret, smiling, “and don’t you dare give it away. So anyway, all the braves went out, and after a long time they started to come back with wolf hides and rabbit hides and things like that. The chief was unimpressed. Then one day, a brave came back with a hide from a grizzly bear, which is pretty amazing, so the chief let him marry his youngest daughter. Then the next guy came back with a hide from a polar bear, which is even more amazing, so the chief let him marry his middle daughter. They waited and waited, and finally the last brave came back with the hide from a hippopotamus.” “A hippopotamus?” asked Mom. “I thought this was in North America.” “It is,” said Margaret, “that’s why a hippopotamus hide was so great. It was the most amazing hide the tribe had ever seen, and the chief let that brave marry his oldest and most beautiful daughter.” “She’s two minutes older than I am,” said Mom, glancing at me with a mock sneer. “Never lets me forget it.” “Stop interrupting,” said Margaret, “this is the best part. The squaws and the braves got married, and a year later they all had children—the youngest squaw had one son, the middle squaw had one son, and the oldest squaw had two sons.” She paused dramatically, and we stared at her for a moment, waiting. Lauren laughed. “Is there a punchline?” I asked. Lauren and Margaret said it in unison: “The sons of the squaw of the hippopotamus are equal to the sons of the squaws of the other two hides.

Wheat did it by manipulating Homo sapiens to its advantage. This ape had been living a fairly comfortable life hunting and gathering until about 10,000 years ago, but then began to invest more and more effort in cultivating wheat. Within a couple of millennia, humans in many parts of the world were doing little from dawn to dusk other than taking care of wheat plants. It wasn’t easy. Wheat demanded a lot of them. Wheat didn’t like rocks and pebbles, so Sapiens broke their backs clearing fields. Wheat didn’t like sharing its space, water and nutrients with other plants, so men and women laboured long days weeding under the scorching sun. Wheat got sick, so Sapiens had to keep a watch out for worms and blight. Wheat was attacked by rabbits and locust swarms, so the farmers built fences and stood guard over the fields. Wheat was thirsty, so humans dug irrigation canals or lugged heavy buckets from the well to water it. Sapiens even collected animal faeces to nourish the ground in which wheat grew. The body of Homo sapiens had not evolved for such tasks. It was adapted to climbing apple trees and running after gazelles, not to clearing rocks and carrying water buckets. Human spines, knees, necks and arches paid the price. Studies of ancient skeletons indicate that the transition to agriculture brought about a plethora of ailments, such as slipped discs, arthritis and hernias. Moreover, the new agricultural tasks demanded so much time that people were forced to settle permanently next to their wheat fields. This completely changed their way of life. We did not domesticate wheat. It domesticated us. The word ‘domesticate’ comes from the Latin domus, which means ‘house’. Who’s the one living in a house? Not the wheat. It’s the Sapiens. How did wheat convince Homo sapiens to exchange a rather good life for a more miserable existence? What did it offer in return? It did not offer a better diet. Remember, humans are omnivorous apes who thrive on a wide variety of foods. Grains made up only a small fraction of the human diet before the Agricultural Revolution. A diet based on cereals is poor in minerals and vitamins, hard to digest, and really bad for your teeth and gums.

How many rapes occurred inside the walls of the main camp of Ravensbrück is hard to put a figure to: so many of the victims—already, as Ilse Heinrich said, half dead—did not survive long enough after the war to talk about it. While many older Soviet women were reluctant to talk of the rape, younger survivors feel less restraint today. Nadia Vasilyeva was one of the Red Army nurses who were cornered by the Germans on the cliffs of the Crimea. Three years later in Neustrelitz, northwest of Ravensbrück, she and scores of other Red Army women were cornered again, this time by their own Soviet liberators intent on mass rape. Other women make no excuses for the Soviet rapists. ‘They were demanding payment for liberation,’ said Ilena Barsukova. ‘The Germans never raped the prisoners because we were Russian swine, but our own soldiers raped us. We were disgusted that they behaved like this. Stalin had said that no soldiers should be taken prisoner, so they felt they could treat us like dirt.’ Like the Russians, Polish survivors were also reluctant for many years to talk of Red Army rape. ‘We were terrified by our Russian liberators,’ said Krystyna Zając. ‘But we could not talk about it later because of the communists who had by then taken over in Poland.’ Nevertheless, Poles, Yugoslavs, Czechs and French survivors all left accounts of being raped as soon as they reached the Soviet lines. They talked of being ‘hunted down’, ‘captured’ or ‘cornered’ and then raped. In her memoirs Wanda Wojtasik, one of the rabbits, says it was impossible to encounter a single Russian without being raped. As she, Krysia and their Lublin friends tried to head east towards their home, they were attacked at every turn. Sometimes the approach would begin with romantic overtures from ‘handsome men’, but these approaches soon degenerated into harassment and then rape. Wanda did not say she was raped herself, but describes episodes where soldiers pounced on friends, or attacked them in houses where they sheltered, or dragged women off behind trees, who then reappeared sobbing and screaming. ‘After a while we never accepted lifts and didn’t dare go near any villages, and when we slept someone always stood watch.

The foragers’ secret of success, which protected them from starvation and malnutrition, was their varied diet. Farmers tend to eat a very limited and unbalanced diet. Especially in premodern times, most of the calories feeding an agricultural population came from a single crop – such as wheat, potatoes or rice – that lacks some of the vitamins, minerals and other nutritional materials humans need. The typical peasant in traditional China ate rice for breakfast, rice for lunch and rice for dinner. If she was lucky, she could expect to eat the same on the following day. By contrast, ancient foragers regularly ate dozens of different foodstuffs. The peasant’s ancient ancestor, the forager, may have eaten berries and mushrooms for breakfast; fruits, snails and turtle for lunch; and rabbit steak with wild onions for dinner. Tomorrow’s menu might have been completely different. This variety ensured that the ancient foragers received all the necessary nutrients. Furthermore, by not being dependent on any single kind of food, they were less liable to suffer when one particular food source failed. Agricultural societies are ravaged by famine when drought, fire or earthquake devastates the annual rice or potato crop. Forager societies were hardly immune to natural disasters, and suffered from periods of want and hunger, but they were usually able to deal with such calamities more easily. If they lost some of their staple foodstuffs, they could gather or hunt other species, or move to a less affected area. Ancient foragers also suffered less from infectious diseases. Most of the infectious diseases that have plagued agricultural and industrial societies (such as smallpox, measles and tuberculosis) originated in domesticated animals and were transferred to humans only after the Agricultural Revolution. Ancient foragers, who had domesticated only dogs, were free of these scourges. Moreover, most people in agricultural and industrial societies lived in dense, unhygienic permanent settlements – ideal hotbeds for disease. Foragers roamed the land in small bands that could not sustain epidemics. The wholesome and varied diet, the relatively short working week, and the rarity of infectious diseases have led many experts to define pre-agricultural forager societies as ‘the original affluent societies’.

THEORY OF ALMOST EVERYTHING After the war, Einstein, the towering figure who had unlocked the cosmic relationship between matter and energy and discovered the secret of the stars, found himself lonely and isolated. Almost all recent progress in physics had been made in the quantum theory, not in the unified field theory. In fact, Einstein lamented that he was viewed as a relic by other physicists. His goal of finding a unified field theory was considered too difficult by most physicists, especially when the nuclear force remained a total mystery. Einstein commented, “I am generally regarded as a sort of petrified object, rendered blind and deaf by the years. I find this role not too distasteful, as it corresponds fairly well with my temperament.” In the past, there was a fundamental principle that guided Einstein’s work. In special relativity, his theory had to remain the same when interchanging X, Y, Z, and T. In general relativity, it was the equivalence principle, that gravity and acceleration could be equivalent. But in his quest for the theory of everything, Einstein failed to find a guiding principle. Even today, when I go through Einstein’s notebooks and calculations, I find plenty of ideas but no guiding principle. He himself realized that this would doom his ultimate quest. He once observed sadly, “I believe that in order to make real progress, one must again ferret out some general principle from nature.” He never found it. Einstein once bravely said that “God is subtle, but not malicious.” In his later years, he became frustrated and concluded, “I have second thoughts. Maybe God is malicious.” Although the quest for a unified field theory was ignored by most physicists, every now and then, someone would try their hand at creating one. Even Erwin Schrödinger tried. He modestly wrote to Einstein, “You are on a lion hunt, while I am speaking of rabbits.” Nevertheless, in 1947 Schrödinger held a press conference to announce his version of the unified field theory. Even Ireland’s prime minister, Éamon de Valera, showed up. Schrödinger said, “I believe I am right. I shall look an awful fool if I am wrong.” Einstein would later tell Schrödinger that he had also considered this theory and found it to be incorrect. In addition, his theory could not explain the nature of electrons and the atom. Werner Heisenberg and Wolfgang Pauli caught the bug too, and proposed their version of a unified field theory. Pauli was the biggest cynic in physics and a critic of Einstein’s program. He was famous for saying, “What God has torn asunder, let no man put together”—that is, if God had torn apart the forces in the universe, then who were we to try to put them back together?

The Agricultural Revolution was history’s biggest fraud.2 Who was responsible? Neither kings, nor priests, nor merchants. The culprits were a handful of plant species, including wheat, rice and potatoes. These plants domesticated Homo sapiens, rather than vice versa. Think for a moment about the Agricultural Revolution from the viewpoint of wheat. Ten thousand years ago wheat was just a wild grass, one of many, confined to a small range in the Middle East. Suddenly, within just a few short millennia, it was growing all over the world. According to the basic evolutionary criteria of survival and reproduction, wheat has become one of the most successful plants in the history of the earth. In areas such as the Great Plains of North America, where not a single wheat stalk grew 10,000 years ago, you can today walk for hundreds upon hundreds of kilometres without encountering any other plant. Worldwide, wheat covers about 2.25 million square kilometres of the globe’s surface, almost ten times the size of Britain. How did this grass turn from insignificant to ubiquitous? Wheat did it by manipulating Homo sapiens to its advantage. This ape had been living a fairly comfortable life hunting and gathering until about 10,000 years ago, but then began to invest more and more effort in cultivating wheat. Within a couple of millennia, humans in many parts of the world were doing little from dawn to dusk other than taking care of wheat plants. It wasn’t easy. Wheat demanded a lot of them. Wheat didn’t like rocks and pebbles, so Sapiens broke their backs clearing fields. Wheat didn’t like sharing its space, water and nutrients with other plants, so men and women laboured long days weeding under the scorching sun. Wheat got sick, so Sapiens had to keep a watch out for worms and blight. Wheat was attacked by rabbits and locust swarms, so the farmers built fences and stood guard over the fields. Wheat was thirsty, so humans dug irrigation canals or lugged heavy buckets from the well to water it. Sapiens even collected animal faeces to nourish the ground in which wheat grew. The body of Homo sapiens had not evolved for such tasks. It was adapted to climbing apple trees and running after gazelles, not to clearing rocks and carrying water buckets. Human spines, knees, necks and arches paid the price. Studies of ancient skeletons indicate that the transition to agriculture brought about a plethora of ailments, such as slipped discs, arthritis and hernias. Moreover, the new agricultural tasks demanded so much time that people were forced to settle permanently next to their wheat fields. This completely changed their way of life. We did not domesticate wheat. It domesticated us. The word ‘domesticate’ comes from the Latin ‘domus’, which means ‘house’. Who’s the one living in a house? Not the wheat. It’s the Sapiens.

I’m so happy to see you.” “I’m happy to see you, too, Rabbit. Finally. Are you okay?” “I am now.” “Then stop crying. It kills me when you cry.” He wiped the tears from her cheeks with a soft brush of his thumb. “Jenna, let him come in,” Jack said again and put his hands on her shoulders. “Oh, sorry. Come in. Let’s get you settled.” Ben and Jack shook hands. “You lucky SOB. I knew you’d take care of her if I sent her to you. I never thought you’d keep her.” “Yeah, well, tough shit. You got to hug her, now keep your hands to yourself. She’s all mine.” “Yeah, he’s already marked his territory,” Sam said and walked out of the office. “He put a ring on her finger and knocked her up with twins.” Sam grinned, the same cocky grin Jack had on his face. “Sam!” Jenna scolded, outraged by his audacious comment. “Well, it’s true. Hi, Ben, I’m Jack’s brother, Sam. Don’t let the resemblance fool you, we’re exactly alike.” “We’ll get along just fine then. Did I hear you say something about twins?” The two men shook hands while Jack put his arm around Jenna and pulled her to his side. “Yeah, she’s having identical twins. Imagine that.” “See, he’s territorial, too.” Sam pointed to Jack and Jenna. -Jenna, Ben, Jack, & Sam

you had as well go rabbit-hunting with a dead ferret as try to get past his butler!

All men are rabbits,” she retorts, her eyes flying open. “They sniff around, fuck whatever’s available, and then they run off. Fucking rabbits. And we’re Elmer Fudd, inadvertently blowing up our own lives while obsessively trying to hunt one down.

It’s hard to sleep that night. Our sofa’s got more lumps than bean soup, and every time I turn over, I pull out the blanket from the bottom. I get up about two in the morning and stand at the window. Moon’s almost full, and the snow sparkles like diamonds. I’m not lookin’ for moonlight or snowlight, though—only Shiloh. We keep the shed door open on nights like this so he can go in there and sleep if he comes back late. But I know my dog; he’d make at least one detour up on the porch first to see if somebody was awake to let him in. Not a fresh paw print anywhere. I’m thinking of the hunters we heard up in our woods. Deer season’s over now, but there’s possum and coon to hunt; rabbit and groundhog, too. What if a hunter took it in his head to steal Shiloh? You ride along and see notices posted on trees about a dog missing, and most of the time

No, I said I wanted to come, too. I went to ask Mom.” “Sorry, I didn’t know.” I shrug. “Maybe next time. Come on. Let’s head home. I need to get that grease.” I start walking and glance back to be sure she’s following. She’s still standing on the trail staring at the huge stump. “Y’know, there’s bears up here,” I say. That gets her going. She trots down the trail after me and doesn’t slow down until we’re safely back on the road. As soon as we’re home, I go into the garage and make a bunch of noise hunting for the grease until I hear the front door slam and I’m sure Libby has gone into the house. Then I run back up the street and around the corner. I plop down under a tree and count to 100. While I’m counting, I study the tube of grease in my hand. I sure wish this was all my bike needed. I’m pretty sure it’s going to need a whole new front suspension fork. How much is that going to cost?

could carry. Tigerstar must have hunted all night to catch this many, Fireheart thought grimly. “Let’s leave them all here,” Sandstorm suggested when they were still some way from the ravine. Her flanks heaved as she gasped for breath, and she had torn a claw, but her eyes glittered with determination, and Fireheart knew that she would run forever if he asked her to. “If the dogs find a good meal, they’ll stop to eat it.” “Good idea,” Fireheart meowed. “It might have been better to leave them closer to the cave,” Whitestorm pointed out, his eyes dark with worry. “That might have stopped the dogs’ coming to the camp at all.” “True,” Fireheart replied, “but there isn’t time. The dogs could be on their way already. We don’t want to meet them.” Whitestorm nodded agreement. They left the heap of rabbits in full view on the trail and sprinted on. Fireheart felt his heart pounding wildly.

Gods took many of the animals, too. In the end, only six kinds of creatures were left in the Million Acre Wood for the canids to hunt: Deer, raccoon, rabbit, squirrel, rat, mouse.

Jee haan, but they are the same! One hunts, one runs; one chews the carrot, one chews the Sir John Hurt. One makes eggs that go BANG! One makes Acme traps that go BANG! See? Sameful. Only Mr. Looney of the Tunes is more actual, on account of how aliens live in your big Danesh-head and bunny rabbits live in Coventry.

Often, when a person is ill-treated or relegated to a demeaning position in society, they will respond by venting their frustrations at someone whose societal position is even lower than their own. It is not rational; their violent action in no way serves as a retaliation towards their own oppressors. Taking this concept one step further, we can see that by a torturing or dominating a powerful animal, such as a bull, or a tiger in a big-game hunt, the oppressors feel, unconsciously, that they have destroyed those who held power over them. By destroying or tormenting the weak, such as a rabbit or child, the oppressors become the master who has in turn tortured them, their own victims’ helpless writings echoing what they have so often felt. Temporarily replaced in the role of victim, these new reactive torturers ascend, momentarily in their own minds, to the social- or physical-power position of their own masters.

It's Raining Sunshine The tempter came From the land That wants to reign Eat the apple Beckons the tempter You shan't lose the throne The Crown terrorized New World Blacks From Colony to Colony In every nook hole and cranny eye Like Jacob also called Israel The chosen thief that stole Esau's birthright The crown stole the birthrights of the people And call it a Sport They hunted and shoot New World Blacks Like wild rabbits in the Spring Terrorize the people to the bone! For we must have a throne! Buy them! Sell them! Breed them! Like the goods we make them! They are alone They know not anyone No one will weep for them They must make us rich forever! We are lost without them! We must have fame to our name! We are vegan cannibals We kill them But we won't eat them Feed them to our adorable wildcats and vultures Long live the throne! New World Blacks shall perish! The throne shall live and never die! All hail English Hitler!

Like many suburban homeowners, I like to kill and eat the wild animals that populate my backyard. To keep it sporting, I hunt naked, with my teeth and long, sharpened fingernails as my only weapons. I’ve feasted on squirrel, raccoon, vole, and numerous songbirds. But no matter how long I lay spread-eagle and motionless in the hot noonday sun, I have never been able to outwit and catch any of the plump and juicy rabbits that hop just outside my reach and then bolt for the woods when I leap forward with a blood-curdling shriek. I have chased them at a dead run through the yards of the many unoccupied homes that surround mine, but the pursuit always ends in frustration. But no more, thanks to Amazon. Every week, I order a fresh whole rabbit and affix it to a remote control car that is operated by one of my children. This way, I get the thrill of the hunt, and when the car’s batteries are exhausted, I can leap upon it, bury my teeth into the rabbit’s soft flesh, and perform my ritual victory dance right there in the Walgreens parking lot.

Richard returned to the desert to hunt, practicing what Mike had taught him: how to approach game with stealth, and when to pull the trigger. He’d see just the tips of a rabbit’s ears as it hid among rocks, and he’d crawl up to it without being seen. It was a game he enjoyed, but he knew it was a game which could become real at any time. “You never know,” Mike had taught him, “when you’ll have to provide for yourself, kill or be killed. You have to always be prepared. After all, life is like living in a jungle. It’s a fuckin’ dog-eat-dog world, and if you don’t eat first, you get eaten. Period. It’s that simple.

Arrows filled the air, cutting down the front line, but soon Picket and Helmer could see little of the battle up ahead. Hearing explosions, they covered their heads. Looking up, they saw that the wolves charged on. The two rabbits saw the desperate hunger of the last of the wolves, surging past their own comrades, slashing out as they did to cut ahead. They were a reckless, rash, and terrifying pack. This was no army, but a frenzied hunting party.

He had grown up in this forest. As a child, Otto had hunted rabbits along the band of white ash that grew along the track of the old river. He remembered the last time the wash filled with

Longtail’s eyes were closed; blood welled from beneath the swollen lids and spattered over his pale tabby fur. “I can’t see! I can’t see!” he wailed. “What happened?” Firestar demanded. “We were out hunting,” Brackenfur explained. “Longtail caught a rabbit, and it turned on him and scratched his eyes.

And then there is the Löwenmensch – the Lion Man of the Hohlenstein-Stadel. In the hills between Nuremberg and Munich in Swabian Germany there are caves that have yielded one of the most important works ever crafted by an unknown artist. Around 40,000 years ago, a woman or man sat somewhere in or near that cave, with the detritus of a hunt scattered around. They took a piece of ivory, a tusk from a woolly mammoth, and carefully considered that it might be the right material, shape and size for something that they had been pondering. Now extinct, cave lions were fierce predators at that time, posing a threat to people, and also to the animals that people would hunt and eat. That person thought about the lions, and how formidable they are, and maybe wondered what it would be like to have the power of a lion in the body of a human. Maybe this tribe revered the cave lions out of fear and awe. Whatever the reason, this artist took that mammoth ivory, a flint knife, and patiently carved the tusk into a mythical figure. It is a chimaera, a fantastic beast that is made up of the parts of multiple animals. Chimaeras exist throughout all human cultures for most of history, from mermaids, fawns or centaurs, to the glorious monkey-man god Hanuman, to the Japanese snake-woman nure-onna, to the Wolpertinger, an absurd and mischievous Bavarian part-duck part-squirrel part-rabbit with antlers and vampire teeth. Today, we have reached the ultimate manifestation of a 40,000-year interest in hybrid creatures in genetic engineering, where elements from one animal are transposed into another, and hence we have cats that glow in the dark with the genes of deep-sea crystal jellyfish Aquorea victoria, and goats that produce dragline silk from the golden orb weaver spider in their udders. The Lion Man of Hohlenstein-Stadel

through any structure without detection by his prey. He was a flawless assassin. It was just before five local time when Steven settled into the plush leather seating of the first-class compartment. The Deutsche Bahn Intercity Express, or ICE, was a high-speed train connecting major cities across Germany with other major European destinations. The trip to Frankfurt would take about four hours, giving him time to spend some rare personal time with his team. Slash was the first to find him. The men shook hands and sat down. Typically, these two longtime friends would chest bump in a hearty bro-mance sort of way, but it would be out of place for Europe. “Hey, buddy,” said Steven. “Switzerland is our new home away from home.” “It appears so, although the terrain isn’t that different from our place in Tennessee,” said Slash. “I see lots of fishin’ and huntin’ opportunities out there.” Slash grew up on his parents’ farm atop the Cumberland Plateau of Tennessee about halfway between Nashville and Knoxville. His parents were retired and spent their days farming while raising ducks, rabbits and some livestock. While other kids spent their free time on PlayStation, Slash grew up in the woods, learning survival skills. During his time with the SEAL Teams, he earned a reputation as an expert in close-quarters combat, especially using a variety of knives—hence the nickname Slash. “Beats the heck out of the desert, doesn’t it?” asked Steven. After his service ended, Slash tried a few different security outfits like Blackwater, protecting the Saudi royal family or standing guard outside some safe house in Oman. “I’m not saying the desert won’t call us back someday, but I’ll take the Swiss cheese and German chocolate over shawarma and falafel every friggin’ day!” “Hell yeah,” said Slash. “When are you comin’ down for some ham and beans, along with some butter-soaked cornbread? My folks really wanna meet you.” “I need to, buddy,” replied Steven. “This summer will be nuts for me. Hey, when does deer hunting season open?” “Late September for crossbow and around Thanksgiving otherwise,” replied Slash. Before the guys could set a date, their partners Paul Hittle and Raymond Bower approached their seats. Hittle, code name Bugs, was a former medic with Army Special Forces who left the Green Berets for a well-paying job with DynCorp. DynCorp was a private

In the night, when the owl is less than exquisitely swift and perfect, the scream of the rabbit is terrible. But the scream of the owl, which is not of pain and hopelessness and the fear of being plucked out of the world, but of the sheer rollicking glory of the death-bringer, is more terrible still. When I hear it resounding through the woods, and then the five black pellets of its song dropping like stones into the air, I know I am standing at the edge of the mystery, in which terror is naturally and abundantly part of life, part of even the most becalmed, intelligent, sunny life — as, for example, my own. The world where the owl is endlessly hungry and endlessly on the hunt is the world in which I live too. There is only one world

set out to try and work it out for myself: hunting up period recipes and trying them out; learning to manage fires and skin rabbits; standing on one foot with a dance manual in one hand, trying to make sense of where my next move should

How did this grass turn from insignificant to ubiquitous? Wheat did it by manipulating Homo sapiens to its advantage. This ape had been living a fairly comfortable life hunting and gathering until about 10,000 years ago, but then began to invest more and more effort in cultivating wheat. Within a couple of millennia, humans in many parts of the world were doing little from dawn to dusk other than taking care of wheat plants. It wasn’t easy. Wheat demanded a lot of them. Wheat didn’t like rocks and pebbles, so Sapiens broke their backs clearing fields. Wheat didn’t like sharing its space, water and nutrients with other plants, so men and women laboured long days weeding under the scorching sun. Wheat got sick, so Sapiens had to keep a watch out for worms and blight. Wheat was attacked by rabbits and locust swarms, so the farmers built fences and stood guard over the fields. Wheat was thirsty, so humans dug irrigation canals or lugged heavy buckets from the well to water it. Sapiens even collected animal faeces to nourish the ground in which wheat grew. The body of Homo sapiens had not evolved for such tasks.

You might hunt me up the hind foot of a rabbit, shot by a cross-eyed coon in a graveyard, in the ‘dark of the moon,’ if you want to make sure of my winning,” jested Bert. “But, seriously, fellows, I’m

Three brothers sat under black clouds drinking moonlit water. Don’t be afraid brothers, Rabbit whispered and stepped out of the tall grass. It is I, Rabbit, your brother-in-law. The brothers lifted their ears and prepared to run. You do not look like Rabbit, the eldest brother said and tapped his foot on the ground. You look like Coyote. No little brothers. I am only wearing Coyote’s skin. How is it that you have Coyote’s skin? The middle brother asked and twitched his nose, trying to smell who Rabbit really was. Rabbit laughed. Coyote became angry with me for tricking him and making him drown in the river, he hunted me through the forest and caught me up in his jaws. He shook me until I was dead and then ate me and left my bones in a mound on the riverbank. The river woke up my bones and I snuck into Coyote’s camp and stole his skin while he was sleeping. Come with me brothers, while Coyote dreams and I still wear his face. What for? The youngest brother asked the question as he scratched a flea from his fur. So, we can pounce on Old Man Coyote while he’s naked and distracted. I can find where he’s hidden my skin and finally, we can eat him too.

Longhai capped his flask. "Did you see her fur coat? Rabbit, fox, wolf, at least three different bears. Northerners only wear what they can hunt--Lady Sarnai must be quite skilled." He heaved a sympathetic sigh. "She won't be an easy time adjusting to life here.

Say,” he said, “I’ll tell you a secret. I s’pose I’ve shot more birds and rabbits than any man in this county, if I do say it, and I never bring down a partridge or kill a chicken that I don’t feel sorry for it. I ain’t never got over it and I guess I never shall. But it’s only thing old Sam Bumpus is good for, I reckon, and it has to be done. Folks has to eat and I have to make a livin’. I don’t do it for fun, though I don’t know any finer thing in this world than trampin’ off ‘cross country with a gun and a good dog on a fine mornin’.

Zade asks, adding extra shredded cheddar on the mac ‘n’ cheese before sticking the casserole dish back in the oven to crisp. Seeing him doing something so domestic is… odd. I never thought I’d see oven mitts on a stalker and professional killer, but here we are… All he needs is an apron, and I’d be convinced I’ve fallen down the rabbit hole and hit my head on a tree root.

Longhair capped his flask. "Did you see her fur coat? Rabbit, fox, wolf, at least three different bears. Northerners only wear what they can hunt--Lady Sarnai must be quite skilled." He heaved a sympathetic sigh. "She won't be an easy time adjusting to life here.

Let’s now turn our attention to the predator. The predator, too, can make two types of error: It can commit itself to killing prey that turns out to be too dangerous or too large or too fast (type I error), or it can refrain from attacking prey that it could easily have killed (type II error). Which error do you think a predator makes more often? A cheetah is the fastest mammal on Earth and routinely achieves speeds of eighty to one hundred kilometers per hour while chasing prey.6 It sacrifices size and bulk for speed. A cheetah typically weighs 34 to 54 kilograms (75 to 120 pounds), which is significantly less than a lion, whose weight typically ranges from 170 to 230 kilograms (375 to 500 pounds). Hence, a cheetah usually preys on smaller animals like birds, rabbits, and small antelopes. A cheetah will never attempt to kill an adult water buffalo, a favorite prey of lions. The cheetah is simply trying to avoid getting hurt. Committing a type I error will lead either to death—water buffalos can turn on their hunters aggressively—or wasted energy—when a cheetah chases an antelope that was too far away to begin with. These mistakes, in turn, will lead to hunger and poorer hunting performance.

Long ago, the great Frith made the world. He made all the stars, and the Earth lived among the stars. He made all the animals and birds, and at first, he made them all the same. Now, among the animals in these days was El-Ahrairah, the prince of rabbits. He had many friends, and they all ate grass together. But after a time, the rabbits wandered everywhere, multiplying and eating as they went. Then Frith said to El-Ahrairah, 'Prince Rabbit, if you cannot control your people, I shall find ways to control them.' But El-Ahrairah would not listen. He said to Frith, 'My people are the strongest in the world.' This angered Frith, and he determined to get the better of El-Ahrairah. And so, he gave a present to every animal and bird, making each one different from the rest. When the fox came, and others, like the dog, and cat, hawk, and weasel, to each of them, Frith gave a fierce desire to hunt and kill the children of El-Ahrairah. Your people cannot rule the world, for I will not have it so. All the world will be your enemy, Prince with a Thousand Enemies, and whenever they catch you, they will kill you. But first they must catch you, digger, listener, runner, prince with the swift warning. Be cunning and full of tricks and your people shall never be destroyed.

of the reward circuitry leads to a localized rebellion. If DeltaFosB is the gas pedal for bingeing, the molecule CREB functions as the brakes. CREB dampens our pleasure response.[134] It inhibits dopamine. CREB is trying to take the joy out of bingeing so that you give it a rest. Oddly enough, high levels of dopamine stimulate the production of both CREB and DeltaFosB. Our bodies are equipped with countless feedback mechanisms to keep us alive and functioning well. It makes perfect sense for mammals also to have evolved a braking system for bingeing on food or sex. There comes a time to move on and take care of the kids or maybe hunt and gather. But the glitch in the CREB/DeltaFosB balancing act is that it evolved long before humans were exposed to powerful reinforcers such as whiskey, cocaine, ice cream, or porn tube sites. All have the potential to override evolved satiation mechanisms, including CREB’s brakes. Put simply, CREB doesn’t stand much chance in the era of supernormal stimuli and widely available prescription and illicit drugs. What’s CREB to do in face of a Big Mac, fries and milkshake dinner, followed by 3-hour Mountain Dew-fuelled Call of Duty session, and two hours of surfing PornHub while smoking a joint? What array of enticements did a 19-year old hunter-gatherer encounter to goose his dopamine? Perhaps a second helping of overcooked rabbit meat or watching the four girls he’d known since birth tan hides.

She is awake. And I must remind myself of how it began. The end of all things. It was a time of witches, it was a time of saints, a time when rabbits hunted foxes, when children came into the world without their heads, and kings lost theirs on the scaffold. The world was turned upside down, or so some said.

Everything was in fine shape for the hunt. Everything was fitly ordered and we were well away when a disconcerting element tumbled in among us. With a yap of glee, there, bounding, came that full bull terrier, Silly Billy. Like a June-bug among honey bees, like a crazy schoolboy in a council room, he rollicked and yapped, eager to be first, to be last, to take liberties with Thunder, to chase the Rabbits, to bay the Squirrels, ready for anything but what was wanted of him; to stay home and mind his own business.

Whitestorm answered her. “I suspect ShadowClan is not as weak as we thought it would be. And Nightpelt seems to have more ambition than any cat expected.” “But why does RiverClan want to hunt WindClan’s grounds? They have always grown fat on the fish from their precious river!” yowled Willowpelt. “The uplands are a long way to go for a few windblown rabbits!” The once-beautiful queen, Dappletail, spoke up in a voice cracked with age. “At the Gathering, some of the RiverClan elders spoke of Twolegs taking over part of their river.” “That’s right,” added Frostfur. “They say Twolegs have been living in shelters beside the river, disturbing the fish. The RiverClan cats have had to hide in the bushes and watch them with empty stomachs!” Bluestar looked thoughtful. “For now, we must be careful to do nothing that may bring ShadowClan and RiverClan closer together. Go and rest now. Runningwind and Dustpaw, you will take the dawn patrol.” A cold breeze rattled the dying leaves in the trees overhead. The cats, still murmuring amongst themselves, went to their dens. For the second night in a row, Fireheart dreamed. He was standing in the dark. The roar and the stench of a Thunderpath was very close by. Fireheart felt himself buffeted and blinded by the monsters that roared up and down with glaring eyes. Suddenly, through the din, Fireheart heard the pitiful cry of a young cat. The desperate wail sliced through the thundering of the monsters. Fireheart awoke with a start. For a moment he thought that the cry had woken him. But the only noise was the muffled snores of

You’d really let me walk away?” “Silly, rabbit. I said you’d walk away. I didn’t say I wouldn’t hunt you down and drag you home to me.

She remembered asking, as they headed towards Newbury, if this was where Watership Down had been set. Jack had laughed – ‘European Capital of the Hunt’ he called it. ‘Wall-to-wall fascists’. Then he slipped seamlessly into one of his tirades against the ‘landed gentry’ and the hypocrisy which underpinned their supposed love of the countryside. All that was missing was the T-shirt: FUCK THE RABBITS!

Will he keep his promise? he wondered. Will he come to mentor the three of us to our true destiny? CHAPTER 10 Hollyleaf leaped, sinking her claws into the vole and dispatching it with a quick nip to the neck. Straightening up with her prey in her jaws, she spotted Lionblaze approaching through the bracken, dragging the limp body of a rabbit. “Hey, great catch!” she mumbled around the vole. Twilight had fallen, and deep shadows lay on the forest floor. Hollyleaf and Lionblaze had stopped near the dead tree to hunt on their way back to camp, while Jaypaw looked for fresh herbs. “Let’s get back,” he meowed, padding up with a bunch of tansy. “I’m worried about the sick cats. Leafpool can’t do everything, and if I’m any later she’ll have my pelt for bedding.

I caught a fish that weighed three stone if it weighed a pound!” Nick bragged, looking to Kit for approval. “Indeed.” Kit nodded in assent, supportively. “But mine was the real coup—I took down a rabbit with feet as large as my own!” “Mmmm,” Will agreed, taking a drink of wine. “Neither compares with the quail I bested…it was the size of a golden eagle! Wasn’t it, Blackmoor?” Blackmoor smiled broadly, leaning back and looking from one brother to the next. “I’m not certain I want to be involved in this particular conversation,” he said with a laugh. “Oh?” Alex asked with a twinkle in her eye, knowing exactly why he wouldn’t participate. “Could that be because this generation of Staffords has been having this very conversation for years, since they were old enough to go hunting?” Blackmoor smiled at her and replied, “It could be…” “And perhaps because, for years, it is only after the Stafford boys have relayed their incredible feats of manhood that their father ruins their fun by telling the truth—that none of the three of them could catch a fish, a rabbit, or a bird if his very life depended on it?” the duke noted, drawing a laugh from everyone around the table. “Alas, it seems the wildlife of this particular estate have nothing to fear from their masters,” Vivi said. “It’s a good thing you’re all fairly intelligent,” Ella remarked. “And don’t forget attractive,” added Nick, good-humoredly. “Oh, of course!” Alex replied sarcastically. “How could we forget?” The

Leaving the Connecticut River March 8, 1704 Temperature 40 degrees Eben realized that he need not worry about being burned or tortured. He was going to starve to death. Eben had thought that up here, where nobody lived or ever had, the deer would be standing in rows in the woods awaiting a bullet. He had expected rabbits and grouse, moose and beaver. But there was no game. They built shelters from woven branches, piling spruce and hemlock on top to keep out the snow. Each day some of the Indians left to hunt and each day they came back with nothing. It had never occurred to Eben that an Indian could go hunting and find nothing. He was not sure how far they still had to go to reach Canada. He had seen a map once that showed the Connecticut River, how it split the colony of Connecticut in half, then cut up through Massachusetts, headed north through unknown lands and bumped into Canada. The northern part of the map was guesswork. Eben needed a French map, which would show the city of Montreal, where the French kept their government, and the St. Lawrence River, down which fortunes in fur were shipped. He could not ask his master. An Indian kept his map in his head.

Kahnawake August 1704 Temperature 75 degrees By summer, Kahnawake children had stopped wearing clothing. Mercy could not get over the sight of hundreds of naked children playing tag, or hide-and-seek, or competing in footraces. The boys--naked!--went into the woods to shoot squirrels and rabbits and partridge. They used bow and arrow, since their fathers did not like them using guns yet. Even the six- and seven-year-olds had excellent aim. Joseph didn’t go entirely bare, being a little too old, but wore a breechclout, a small square of deerskin in back and another square in front, laced on a slender cord. The boys played constantly. They were stalking, shooting, running, chasing, aiming, fishing, swimming--they never sat down. The men, however, mainly rested. They liked to smoke and talk, and when they were showing a son or nephew or captive how to feather an arrow or find ducks, they did it slowly and sometimes forgot about it in the middle. A Puritan must rise before dawn and never take his ease. Puritans believed in working hard. But for an Indian man, working hard was something to do for an hour or a week. After he killed the moose or fought the battle, an Indian took his ease. Hunting men and animals were dangerous; he deserved rest afterward, and besides, he had to prepare himself to do it again. A Deerfield man didn’t risk much plowing a field. A Kahnawake man risked everything going into a cave to rouse a sleeping bear.