Red Rage carried his rabbit kill deep into the forest before he began to eat. He wasn't very hungry. After eating a whole family of two adult and four baby stoats just the day before, not to mention partially eating a fox opponent, Red Rage didn't really have to eat for a while. But here he was, chewing at the rabbit caracaras, not really enjoying the normal sweet taste that came from rabbit meat.

Red Rage admired himself greatly. With his huge size and unimaginably strong body, Red Rage was one of the most powerful foxes in all of Europe. All of his prey, not to mention all stoats, weasels, foxes, and even hounds feared him. He wandered the land here and there, making a kill whenever he was hungry.

But now the huge fox had a couple reasons to stay in one place. He had found a warren in which he could easily find food. Red Rage couldn't believe how stupid the rabbits in the warren were. When he came approached, Red Rage hadn't even expected to make a kill. He just wanted to get a good view of the warren. But then he saw how dumb the rabbits were. Five of them were all stretched out the grass, as if they had Prince Rainbow protecting them. They had obviously smelled him, Red Rage had a strong scent, which he thought was very sweet, but they seemed to have no idea what the hell the smell of fox was. Not until he was four yards from the obviously stupid rabbits did one of them recognize the smell and sounded the alarm. But by then, it was too late for one of the five rabbits to face their doom. Only two of them managed to avoid the fox's leap. As the tremendous fox killed one of them and injured the two others, one rabbit emerged from the trees. Red Rage chased it to its hole, out of amusement, obviously, with only a small intent of killing it, but with the fox only inches behind him, the rabbit made a lucky leap of faith and landed in its burrow. But Red Rage never really liked killing animals more than three times in the same area, even if they were stupid.

Red Rage stopped chewing on the rabbit and stretched himself out on the grass. He decided not to think about the warren anymore. As far as he was concerned, it was ancient history. The fox was about to go to sleep when another reason Red Rage was confined to this area stepped out of the trees.

"You're not going to eat all of that, are you," snapped Rouge, Red Rage's mate, "because I've got some hungry cubs that need some food."

"Does it look like I'm eating it," Red Rage shot back, "and are those cubs always hungry? It seems that I have to hunt for them every day."

"Yes, they are always hungry," snarled Rouge, "that's because they're growing. You don't want to grow up weak and slow, do you?"

"All, right, All, right, I'll give them the bloody rabbit," snapped Red Rage, "it's not like it was a hard kill anyway." The two foxes began to walk to where the cubs were hidden.

"Wait a second," said Rouge, "rabbits aren't stupid. They know when your coming because of your scent. You usually have to chase them. This one doesn't look like it has any injuries. How come it didn't run?"

Just then, they reached to cubs. All five of them came out if the den and played about Red Rages feet before he dropped the rabbit in the midst of them. He watched the hungry cubs tear at the carcass for a minute before he said, "none of them ran. It was as if they didn't know the scent of fox."

"What do you mean by none of them," said Rouge, "was there more than one dumb rabbit?"

"There were five," said Red Rage. Rouge stared at him for a second before he continued. "I was just checking out the place, not hunting. I wanted to see if I could find a way to block a rabbit from its burrow, you know, I was planning to kill one of them another day. But then I saw these five rabbits all sprawled out on the grass. I thought that it might be fun to scare them, so I just walked up to them. They obviously smelled me, because I saw them sniffing the air, but they didn't run. They obviously didn't know what a fox smells like. Finally, one of them recognized it and screamed out 'homba' but by that time, it was to late for them to run away. Seeing that the cubs might be hungry, I jumped on them. Two actually managed to get away, but I caught this one and wounded the others."

Rouge stood silent for a minute. Then she said, "interesting. I've barely ever heard of anything like it. Rabbits not knowing the smell of fox. Actually, now that I think about it, that's unheard of. I mean, we're their main enemies."

"I know that," said Red Rage, "but these rabbits might be different."

"Different, different," said Rouge, "you don't get it. Us foxes kill more rabbits than stoats, owls, badgers, and whatever creature you can think of except for man combined. Either you have a different smell, or those rabbits are just plain stupid."

"I'm going to go with the second part," said Red Rage, "every other animal I run into knows my smell and takes off as fast they can."

"Hmmm, now that I think about it, these rabbits sound very familiar," said Rouge, "I think they remind me a lot of one group of rabbits I've heard of before."

"Well, whatever," said Red Rage, "they were more or less like hutch rabbits. They had no idea what my smell was. Do you think it might be a warren of escaped hutch rabbits?"

"Hold on," said Rouge, "I know what this warren is. It' the warren of Shining Wires, Cowslip's warren, they call it."

Rouge began to think out loud, saying different things about the warren. Red Rage finally heard enough and said, "Woe, Woe, Woe, back up the lecture a little bit and please tell me what the hell the Shining Wire Warren is."

Rouge gave her mate an angry look; she was getting very tired of Red Rage's ignorance and loud, obnoxious interruptions. Couldn't he see that she was trying to think? She didn't care that Red Rage was one of the most powerful foxes in the land. As far as she was concerned, he had to learn not to be so rude.

At seeing Rouge's angry look, Red Rage backed off and said, "All right, I'm listening, tell me about this place."

"Well, it was once a rather large warren many years ago," said Rouge, hoping that her mate wouldn't interrupt her again, "then the plague of the White Blindness hit, and about three fourths of the warren died. The survivors were soon taken under the wing of a farmer, who would feed them and kill their enemies."

"Wait a second, there's a catch to this, isn't there," said Red Rage, "most men wouldn't just take a warren under their wing for no reason."

"Actually, there is," said Rouge, "the farmer would snare the rabbits every once in a while. He wouldn't snare to many of them. Just enough so that the warren wouldn't be destroyed."

"Stupid rabbits," grumbled Red Rage, "what happened later?"

"Well, eventually after all the feeding and protection the man gave them, they eventually abandoned their waves of life," continued Rouge, "and then the babies that were born learned that the way they were living was the right way of life. It was kind of sad actually. Almost all of them were disobeying the laws of nature, and they didn't know it."

"Wait," said Red Rage, "what do you mean by almost all of them?"

"There was this one female rabbit that went by the name of Winters Wrath," said Rouge, "she somehow knew that the way the warren lived was wrong, and she didn't want to get snared. She had a little band of rebels, as you might call them, that patrolled the land and learned about the ways of regular rabbit life."

"What happened to her," asked Red Rage, "and how do you know all of this?"

"You see," said Rouge, "I once stalked the little band, and I overheard a conversation that they were having. I waited until it was over before I attacked them. Problem was, they were very smart. They smelled me before I attacked them. Right before I could spring, they all took off in various directions. I tried finding them again, but they knew I was after them, and they managed to hide from me. I learned a lot about them and their purpose by asking several stoats and foxes that knew a little bit about them."

"About the first part," said Red Rage.

"Well, as you can expect from a young gang of wandering rabbits, most of them died one way or another. But several did survive the patrols, including Winters Wrath, and eventually the warren changed," said Rouge. Before Red Rage could ask, she said, "something happened to the farmer, and the snares eventually disappeared."

"Interesting," said Red Rage, "so that's why they didn't run, they have absolutely no idea what a fox smells like."

"Exactly," said Rouge, "and just in case you're wondering, it got the name Cowslip's warren from their bozo ruler who is now the chief rabbit. I think Winters Wrath is the captain of their new Owsla."

Red Rage was about to speak, when one of the cubs came up to Red Rage. It was Albi, Red Rages favorite cub. Albi was a rare albino fox, and Red Rage hoped that he would live the life that he was.

As Red Rage played with Albi, Rouge said, "to make things a little easier on you, I think we should use that warren as our new watering hole."

"What do you mean?" said Red Rage.

"I think that we should make all the kills that we need for ourselves and our cubs at that warren for a while," said Rouge, "it will make thing a lot easier on you."

Red Rage agreed. He played with Albi until the cub went back to the burrow to sleep. Red Rage took a walk when the cub left. He went to the foot of a hill and stared at the surroundings. He sighed. He knew that the warren would probably be wiped out if he killed just about a rabbit a day there. Killing at one particular place many times wasn't his style. He liked running out in the wild and picking off different animals from different areas. Not killing off stupid animals one at a time at the same place. This wasn't the challenge that Red Rage liked. But Red Rage cared for his family.