The Hare Who Drifted Away

Transcript

Here is a reported turn-of-the-century anecdote from A Hundred Anecdotes of Animals. The animal is called “puss,” and the human witness is an unnamed boatman helping people during a sudden Rhine inundation. With the water rising, the hare could not reach higher ground, so it climbed a tree. The boatman rowed over, climbed after it, and left his boat improperly fastened. Then came the one sudden turn on which the story rests. Frightened by the pursuer, the hare leapt from its branch into the boat. The boat slipped away. And there, in the comic reversal, the would-be captor was left stranded in the tree, while the hare drifted off in his boat. The account says the boatman feared being swept away and was later seen and rescued by companions. It is a period anecdote, preserved as a story of mischance and animal escape, not verified evidence of what the hare intended.