Jacky Rabbit and the Empty Jam Pot

How had things come to this?

He did not know, but he knew how to fix it.

He put on his visiting jacket, with the buttoned collar and the fur wrists he was secretly proud of, and set off to visit his good friend Mr Badger.

He walked out his tidy burrow, and then he did what he always did:

And with that, he twitched his nose and ears, and did a somersault once and then a backflip thrice, and a spin in place. And then he wiggled his nose in satisfaction at finishing his daily exercises—just as his father Mr Jacky Rabbit Senior had taught him to do in the age-old tradition of Rabbits. (This was untrue. Mr Rabbit Senior just preferred his version of the traditional rhyme.)

He strolled along the muddy path, down the grassy strip by the river (“hullo Mr Otter, a fine day”, “and hullo Mr Rabbit, a fine day indeed”), and around a bend of rushes (not that he was in a hurry, and neither, really were the rushes—at least, Jacky Rabbit had never seen them go much of anywhere besides back and forth), and past this and that, and soon he was at a familiar black circle in the river bank.

As always, the walk was just the right length to give him a pleasant appetite, as he knocked. “Do come in, my dear leporiform chum!” (Mr Badger was proud of having been to university, for several days before the groundskeepers could evict him, and had learned not one but three synonyms for the word “rabbit”, like “cony”. When Jacky Rabbit heard all 3 terms, he knew Mr Badger was in an excellent mood, and so he could ask for more than just a cup of tea.)

“Yes, yes, come in and have some snacks with me!” “You are gracious as ever, Mr Badger, my friend. But I only wished to trouble you for a cup of tea as I walked by on this fine day.” “Bully bosh! Pish-posh! Rot and razzmatazz!” (Mr Badger had learned other words at university, but he had not always correctly understood them. This was not a problem because the other animals had less education, and in any case, Mr Badger was a good sort who made himself clear by his gestures and tone of voice.) “No, really—” “I insist! Yes, we will have tea and scones.” (A ‘scone’ is a biscuit which costs extra.)

“Well, since you insist…”, Jacky Rabbit demurred as his belly quietly gurgled like a recently used sink drain, and went in.

The kettle had started whistling when Mr Badger finished bustling around his small kitchen, and brought the biscuits to the table. (“Scones”, Jacky Rabbit mentally corrected himself. Mr Badger would be upset if he called them ‘biscuits’.)

Jacky Rabbit reached out for his scones and paused. The biscuits (scones) were there—but where was the blueberry jam? He looked up, and Mr Badger did not look so happy.

“Ah, erm, well, it appears we are a little short on the… you know. The usual.”

The blueberry jam?

“The usual.”

Jacky Rabbit’s baffled ears twitched as if to say, “But you always have blueberry jam! There are fields and fields of them. They are the most delicious fruit around here, and I should know. I have been looking forward to them all day, and how am I to eat these biscuits without so much as a spoonful of blueberry jam?”

Mr Badger, an educated gentleman, read all this in the ears and took no offense, being too embarrassed at his breach of hospitality to notice any errors.

“Well, you see, there’s been quite the little fuss, a rumpus-fumpus. Indeed, it’s been a shillelaghly doo-lallely of a doozy, as my great-uncle used to say. My blueberry fields are now so much burnt blueberry pie.”

The ears asked what on earth that was supposed to mean?

“Shockingly, a dragon came the other week and breathed fire all over my fields and now my crop is so much blueberry flambe! I don’t even know why: he came in a huff, huffed fire, and went off in a huff too.”

Jacky Rabbit’s eyes bugged out more than usual for a rabbit. This was shocking news indeed. He searched his memory and could not remember a single dragon-related crop failure before.

Wait—dragons were real? Now, Jacky Rabbit could believe in talking rabbits and badgers and even the Easter Bunny (supposedly a distant cousin 6× removed although no one could quite find him in the Rabbit clan genealogy which filled several thousand large volumes in the clan library), but this strained his suspension of disbelief.

“If you don’t believe me, go see for yourself. You can still smell it from here.”

As a matter of fact, Jacky Rabbit could smell a certain blueberry pie smell; he had simply assumed it was a blueberry pie baked the normal way, as opposed to the fast way. And he was infuriated that his blueberry jam had all gone up in smoke, and he would do something about it or else his name wasn’t Jacky Rabbit!

“Splendid! You truly are the bravest animal I know. I will draw you a map to the wicked dragon’s castle, and you shall save the entire Portbottom Woods from this disaster.”

Jacky Rabbit took the map, nose twitching rapidly, and marched out the door, nose twitching less rapidly as he went:

Indeed, after a rather slow and awkward somersault, his nose was no longer twitching at all. A dragon? A real live dragon? What could a rabbit, however clever and fearless and swift, do against a dragon?

But what would Mr Badger think if he quit and went home like a chicken? That would not make sense. Jacky Rabbit was a rabbit, not a chicken. He could not do that, so he instead went to the dragon’s castle.

The journey to the dragon’s castle was too eventful to recount here, so we will not. Jacky Rabbit arrived at the dragon’s castle after bidding farewell to his numerous new friends and acquaintances, and tearfully telling their stories of the foes overcome along the way and how their lives had changed forever, and looked at the castle. It was indeed a dragon’s castle, exactly like in a fairy tale or animal story, so we will not describe that further either.

His new friends had many suggestions, ranging from “shoot it through the heart with my enchanted bow and arrow” to “trick the dragon into turning into a mouse which you can then eat” to “stab it through the heart with my enchanted lance”, but few seemed useful to Jacky Rabbit. He would simply march right in and give the dragon a stern talking to, his ears said. Tell him that you cannot just go and flambe any fields you please! Did his mother never teach him manners or about respecting other peoples’ things? If he wanted to take up pastry baking as a hobby and was unsure where to start, he should send Mr Badger a polite letter requesting a favor, and await a response.

So fiercely was Jacky Rabbit rehearsing his speech with his ears that he did not notice the dragon’s head rising over the battlements and watching him with its giant, beady, black eyes.

The speech was complete. No dragon would disagree with his arguments—indeed, no dragon could disagree with his arguments. In the end, this whole dragon was no big deal, Jacky Rabbit now felt sure. He prepared himself at the drawbridge to go in, and raised his spirits:

He had just finished his final triple pirouette (an especially fancy way of jumping that would horrify an adult if you were to try it) when he heard a series of thunder cracks whose force send him flying end over end, like when you have been pushing a cart while running and suddenly slip on the wooden floor and the cart slips out from under you. Could a rabbit be even more bug-eyed than when he first heard that a dragon was real, then surely Jacky Rabbit was twice as bug-eyed as that when that dragon was unkindly using its real-ness to laugh at him.

The thunder came from the dragon himself, who had been watching Jacky Rabbit through the entire silly jumping and leaping routine, and whose gale of laughter only increased as the rabbit picked himself up and try to piece together an entire living room’s worth of scattered thoughts and confusions.

“I have seen knights, and I have seen kings, and I have seen princesses and maidens, but I have never before seen such a silly rabbit as you down there!”

Jacky Rabbit thought that this was unnecessary to have said, and indeed, perhaps even rude. How would the dragon like it if someone were to point out an awkward crash landing one day? Surely he wouldn’t like it one bit. Hadn’t his mother taught him to not say things to other people if he wouldn’t like it said to them?

Jacky Rabbit stood up and brushed off his shoulder, and looked the dragon straight in its enormous bloodshot eyes.

“I don’t know you find so funny. Obviously I meant to do that. We rabbits are famous for our gymnastics. Don’t you know a cartwheel when you see it?”

This time, he knew how to brace himself against the hurricane-level hot wind.

“I like you! Normally, I would turn you into charcoal, but you are too funny. Come on in, then, if you’re so set on it. But what could bring a rabbit here?”

Jacky Rabbit was clever and fearless and swift as a rabbit ought to be in a world like ours, so filled as it is with things both good and bad (and sometimes the same thing); and so he seized the opportunity with both hands… er, ears, er, front teeth, and didn’t let go. He walked in, and he told the dragon the whole story: “Once there was a rabbit neither young nor old, neither rich nor poor” and so on just as you have heard it now.

“Ah, well.”

The dragon was embarrassed in the middle of his hospitality. (Yes, dragons are sticklers for hospitality—all lizards are. They are gentlemen knights, as you should have known because they all wear suits of armor, from the greatest of dragons, Tiamat, down to the skinniest little iguana.)

“You see, I have nothing against blueberries”, the dragon explained. “I was simply in a foul mood. Because in my castle, I know not where or why, there is this annoying plop-plop sound, as if there was a tiny river somewhere. Sometimes it stops, but then it comes back, right as I am trying to sleep! I haven’t slept in what must be…” (and here the dragon stopped to count on its claws) “no less than… 9 days?” (Jacky Rabbit then realized that the dragon had never been to university nor pursued his education properly, and felt a little sorry for him. The dragon probably didn’t even know that the word “lagomorph” meant “rabbit”.)

“Well, it’s more than that, however much it is. And I am exhausted and cranky, like a child well past its bedtime. I fly around and just get crankier and crankier, and even breathing fire, which usually relaxes me as I enjoy watching the flames, no longer helps. I suppose those blueberry fields of your educated friend must have been one of them.”

Jacky Rabbit’s education had ended somewhere between “hippity-hop” and “university”, but he thought he knew what to do.

“I think I know what to do, Mr Dragon, if you will permit me.”

“Yes, if I can just get to sleep!”

“Then you would stop burning anything in the Portbottom Woods?”

“Gladly!”

“And you will be our friend and come over for blueberry biscuits, I mean, scones, or s’mores or campfires?”

“Of course, if you are clever and fearless and swift—in solving my problem!”

Jacky Rabbit didn’t wait, and shot off into the castle like a rabbit, ears spinning wildly until he found the source of the sound. Just as he thought, it was something that Mr Badger had once told him about (for he had been to university), a thing called a “pipe”. It had been left slightly open, and was high up on the wall.

He couldn’t reach it by just stretching up and biting it. But he was a clever and fearless and swift rabbit, and he sang:

And he did indeed jump with his top and bottom, and bit the pipe’s handle until it stopped dripping.

He returned to the dragon, who had already fallen asleep, sprawled half across the battlement half inside, as if he were some sort of giant cat-snake or a child who stayed up too late watching a movie he shouldn’t’ve.

Then Jacky Rabbit returned home in triumph, with the magic tomato he had won from Circe, and an armor suit woven of rabbit horns and—and—and—but the important thing was that the blueberry fields were now safe, and the dragon had, by way of apology, provided an entire horse-cart of canned blueberry jam (only slightly scorched around the edges), so the animals of Portbottom Woods could celebrate with a proper tea and scones.

His belly full, Jacky Rabbit bid them all good night (“a very good night, Jacky!”), and stepped out, and said:

But he did not do any jumping, because after feasting on enough blueberry jam and scones, even a leaping rabbit must stop for a bit.

Moral of the story:

The End.

And now, young man, you have cleverly delayed bed past 8 o’clock, but not so cleverly I can’t see your trick. No, there shan’t be another story of Jacky Rabbit—until tomorrow night, and then it is you will hear about the strange glass fish that fell out of the sky on Jacky one day.

Straight off with you now, shoo, shoo, and do turn off the lights!