The Constant Rabbit

by Jasper Fforde

if you make a play for the missus either above or below the table, I will probably have to kill you.’ ‘What?’ I said, suddenly taken aback. ‘Not for real obviously,’ he said, giving me a friendly nudge, ‘symbolically. In a duel. Or even in a symbolic duel, where you concede your beta-male status in a meek and self-deprecating fashion without a shot being fired.’ ‘How would I do that?’ ‘Rolling over and weeing on yourself is the most usual form, but a written note of apology and a decent bottle of Chablis will probably suffice.’

I read something that described dandelion brandy as ‘the diabolical three-way love child of methanol, crack cocaine and U-Boat fuel’. I’d been warned never to even go near the stuff, let alone drink it. So I said, without so much as a pause: ‘Yes, I’d like that very much.’

‘Clearing the colonies will flush the Venerable Bunty out, but they don’t want her so the other rabbits will fall into line – they suspect the Venerable Bunty might be behind the Events. That she’s a physical manifestation of the Ancestral Earth Mother Gaia, here to cause trouble for the dominant species, who, let’s face it, have been getting a little too big for their own frontal lobes recently.’