"But why in Firth's name would they make something like this?" Bigwig asked.
The four rabbits looked up at the man-thing in the middle of the vegetable garden, its arms stretched out far by its sides, dressed fully in blue cloth with a straw hat atop its head. The sun cast a shadow of the man-thing over the rabbits.
The day before, they had planned to raid the garden, the group had hid themselves among the bushes. They would wait for the man in the garden to go back into his house, squeeze through the holes in the grey crisscross fence, eat as much flayrah as they could, watching out for the man and his dogs and getting out once they had eaten their full. Mazel tov.
They waited and waited, but the man in the garden remained where he was, having not moved a step forward nor back, changed his gaze neither left nor right, and didn't move a muscle in his body, his arms staying up in the air.
His pose reminded them of one of those pieces of wood with lines scratched all over it, which could be seen stuck into the earth. The ground near those stakes would normally be disturbed, turned soil over a spot where grass once was. Hazel speculated that the humans might have been copying squirrels. Perhaps they buried something important here and they wanted to mark its location to come back for it later, though they have never seen humans dig up the earth in that spot again, they would visit, but they would never retrieve whatever they hidden below the stake.
Fiver took notice of something else about the man, he had fur growing out of him. Long, pale yellow strands of fur stuck out of the end of the blue cloth, it was even further out from the wrist than the longest finger on his hand. Men had some fur, it grew on the top of their heads between the ears, just like Bigwig, the females had very long fur – it looked as if they had a tail on the back of their heads! Some men had fur around their mouths and sparse hairs along thair legs and arms, too, but never hid he see or hear of a man that had such long fur growing all over his body.
"I think we've wasted enough of our time here, if that man won't move, we will find another farm." Hazel said. Nobody objected.
It was well past Ni-Frith, with Inlé soon to be casting darkness over the fields and hills, the rabbits returned to the bushes near the garden.
"He can't seriously still be there, can he?" asked Bigwig.
"He very much is, same spot too." Fiver replied.
"I don't believe it..."
"You can see it for yourself."
"Well yes, I do see him, I do believe you, but I just don't believe it."
"I imagine he will be out there all night as well."
They could not be exactly sure if he did spend the night outside – unless any of the rabbits were happy to keep him company while the elil were prowling about in the darkness – but the following morning, hardly surprising anyone, he was still there, along with another man. The much more livelier of the two tended to the plants and watered them, but did not seem to acknowledge the man who so diligently watched over the vegetables and protected them from those rabbit pests, as if he was invisible – or unimportant, a part of the garden that people would not pay any more attention to than the soil the vegetables grew on. The moving man went back into the house, closing the door behind him.
Curiosity had gotten the best of them, they just had to see what that man in the garden was. They made their way along the length of the fence, getting closer to the house then the road to ensure that they would enter into the garden through the part of the fence that was behind the man. Each rabbit took turns squeezing through the gaps in the fence, the sound of talking could be heard outside through the open window, "... of this very necessary and exciting operation to find and shoot these dogs, who've been putting on a sort of wild west cattle-rustling act up and down these beautiful Lake District hills ever sinc..." As the group slowly inched their way up behind him, snatching bites of lettuce along the way. They finally got closely enough at a safe distance to observe the man, the lower half of the man's body, previously obscured by the fence and greenery of the plants. They saw a length of wood rising from the earth, it pierced right into the man, holding him up, his legs ended on a furry stump, no feet, the long, hairy ends of the man's legs were dangling two rabbit ear lengths above the ground.
"Oh Frith!" Bluebell exclaimed, horrified, "The farmer's killed him! He's killed him and set the body up for us all to see!"
Fiver hopped closer to the man, in spite of Hazel's and Bluebell's hushed warnings. He did not smell like man, Fiver was ready to bolt if the man moved, he sniffed at the fur, it smelt sweet, like hay.
The man did not stir.
Fiver brushed his paw over the fur around the man's stump, small clumps of the fur fell out. He started brushing away more of it, large clumps fell from the blue tube of cloth, creating a small pile below. Fiver looked up into the slightly hollowed out cloth and saw nothing but more fur, no bones of muscles to speak of. He looked down at the fur and smelt it again, slowly and hesitantly, he lowered his head and nibbled into the fur. Everyone behind him recoiled in disgust.
It tasted like hay.
"It's not a real man," Fiver said. "It's stuffed with hay."
He hopped around to face the front of the man-thing and looked up at it, its head was a sack, over what he presumed was more hay, its eyes were buttons stuck onto the sack with zigzagged lines curving into a smile.
The rest of the rabbits joined him and studied the man-thing. "So it isn't, bundles of hay pretending to be a man, like El-Ahrairah pretended to be the Fairy Wogdog." Hazel remarked. "But why in Firth's name would they make something like this?" Bigwig asked.
"To keep us out," Fiver said, "Make a fake man convincing enough and animals will be too scared to come close to the garden, then you'll never need a guard dog."
"A clever trick... for almost a full day" Hazel said.
"Didn't fool me! Just wanted to see how you lot handled it," Bluebell bragged.
"Uh huh," Bigwig said, "Well, if we're already here, let's snag some lettuce, why don't we?"
The farmer walked out to his garden the next day, and noticed a small pile of hay below the right leg of the scarecrow, he might have not tied the string tight enough, oh well, it didn't matter much. He kicked at the pile and then brushed it with his boot in a cone, spreading the hay evenly about in the grass, as he looked down at the strewn about hay, he noticed in the corner of his eye that to the right of the scarecrow, there were some lettuces missing from the patch.