Lord of the Rings: Gone Rum—Denethor De Ville

"Hey, my lord Denethor," said Pippin. "What are you doing?"

Denethor looked up, saw the hobbit, and continued what he was doing.

"Hello?" said Pip. "What are you doing?"

Finally, Denethor spoke. "Doing? Nothing. Nothing at all."

"Sure…," said Pippin. "And what sort of nothing are you doing? It seems to me, someone hiding a large globe under his fur coat and periodically gazing at it could only mean they were up to something."

Denethor looked up, astonished. "How do you know what's under my robe?" he asked in utter disbelief.

"Lucky guess," said Pippin. "Besides, it glows really brightly. I can see it through your coat."

"AHHHHH!" exclaimed Denethor. "My secret is known! I never should have made you my slave—I mean servant, in the first place!"

"Well," began the hobbit, "as long as I already know, why don't you tell me what it is you've got there?"

"If you must know," said Denethor, annoyed. "It's a palantir."

"Eeeeeee!" shrieked Pippin. "A palantir! I've seen one before! Run for your life, my lord! Last time I messed with one of those, some real bad stuff happened. Run for it!"

"I most certainly will not!" stated Denethor angrily. "I am not going anywhere! You are free to go if you wish."

Pippin raced around the throne room several thousand times, screeching in terror, and then ran straight out the window and landed in Denethor's bunny house.

Slightly dazed, Pippin sat up and noticed where he was.

"The House of Bunnies!" he exclaimed happily. "Denethor told me never to come in here, but I'm already here so I might as well stay for a while." He climbed out of the bunny bed in which he had landed and ambled around the many bunny huts dotting the interior of the bunny house. Spotting a white bunny, Pippin ran to catch it for he had an inkling right then to feel some soft fur. He caught the fat rabbit and picked it up. Pippin recognized that particular bunny as Denethor Jr., the best rabbit that Denethor possessed, and the favorite of the steward. He stroked its soft fur and muttered a pretty tune to calm the struggling bunny down. Perhaps what Pippin and most of the Gondorian court didn't know was why Denethor raised bunnies. This deep, dark, secret was something never to be discussed.

As horrible as it seems, the steward planned to make a large fur coat out of the soft, fuzzy, bunnies, when they were fat enough.

Denethor Jr. being his favorite rabbit, he was going to make him into the furry coat collar. In other words, Denethor was an older version of Cruella De Ville!

This being so, every one of the rabbits on one occasion or another had tried to escape out of the fence. Only once did one succeed. An absent-minded guard accidentally left the gate open one night and a bunny named Kamikaze escaped. He hopped down the landing strip of Gondor and made a flying leap off the edge.

"Eeeeeeeeee!" the other bunnies heard and they knew at once what had happened. The guards all came running and shut the gates as quickly as you can say "pots and pans."

So far it had not happened again, thanks to the recent over-watchfulness of Denethor's many guards of the House of Bunnies. (And that's apparently where Gondor's armies were, to answer Gandalf's question.)

Pippin set the bunny down and ran out the gate, for all this rabbit petting was creating a huge appetite. As usual, being the aloof and absent-minded hobbit that he was, he left the gate open. While he sprinted back up to the throne room as quick as he could, the bunnies all escaped. Hopping down the lengthy landing strip of Gondor, they reached the edge and dove off.

"Eeeeeeeeee!" Pippin and Denethor heard coming from outside.

"What was that?" asked the Steward, unnerved.

"Oh," said Pippin, "probably just all of the bunnies making a suicide run."

"Oh no!" shrieked Denethor. "My coats!"

The bunnies all landed safely in a fountain and hopped as far away from Gondor as they could get, to the Shire. And they lived happily ever after. As for Denethor, he brooded over his lost coats for many a day.

"You idiot!" he cried. "You, you fool! Ah, after I was all set to get some nice coats!" He broke out sobbing.

"Ah, shut up," said Pippin.

Finis