Sour Patch Kids: an instructive tale
Miss Weasley, I am heartened to hear that you are finding your enterprise to be an alternative to evil, but this does not constitute a reason to give your brothers unprecedented access to the Hogwarts market. I am also very glad to hear that you and your brothers plan to devote your minds and efforts in Order to better Britain, but if you would allow me to regale you with a tale, it may prove instructive. I wish to recount to you a true story about a close personal friend of mine.
Before he made my acquaintance, Hoppity Bunnikins lived in a forest by the farm of a squib by the name of Farmer Pester. Farmer Pester grew the most delicious peas, beets, lettuce and ambulatory carrots, which were particularly en vogue at the turn of the century. But one year a gang of Pester's carrots went bad and started abusing the other carrots, as well as the peas and lettuce. They resisted Farmer Pester's attempts to seperate them by pelting him with tomatoes and attacking him with weapons they had fashioned from materials around the farm. One morning the words "DIE ÜBERKAROTTEN" appeared in lettuce leaves in the middle of the garden. Farmer Pester had inherited the farm from his father, a first generation wizard who lived far from the nearest wizarding farm, and it would be weeks before a Carrotmancer could arrive to calm down the Carrots, and if there was not a solution before then, he might have lost a third or more of his crop. It was on the third morning of this strife that Hoppity Bunnikins came to see Farmer Pester with a deal.
Now, Hoppity Bunnikins was a very clever rabbit who could scheme schemes no other rabbit had schemed and whose performance of the Pirate King in the 1910 Hogsmeade production of Pirates of Penzance is far and above the greatest I have ever witnessed. Hoppity Bunnikins was unlike other rabbits in other ways as well: he had a shrewd business acumen and he could talk. Well. He could also do the most hilarious extemporaneous lectures on any topic you could introduce, but that is a different story. However, like other rabbits he bore a decided affinity to breeding; we used to say that there was not a member of the family Leporidae that had not evolved from Hoppity Bunnikins. So it was that he had observed Farmer Pesker's problems for a couple of days and had schemed up a plan to feed not only himself but his prodigious family as well.
So Hoppity Bunnikin came to Farmer Pesker with a proposition. "You have a problem with ambulatory carrots, Farmer Pesker, and there is no one who is better at eliminating carrots than my children and I. Open your warded fence so that we can come in, and we will subdue your carrots for you," he said, after assuring Farmer Pesker that yes, he could talk, and that Pesker had not been driven mad.
But Farmer Pesker knew better than to let a rabbit into his garden just like that. "You think just because I cannot subdue these carrots that I am a fool?" replied Farmer Pesker. "I was not born yesterday, nor am I negroid, I will not be jewed into such a terrible mistake for nothing. Why should I let you in to eat my whole crop and ruin me?"
"But Farmer Pesker," protested Hoppity Bunnikins, "I am an honorable rabbit. If ever thou hast believed, believe me now when I say that if you let us in, your crop will be saved, except the traitor carrots which we will take away with us."
Farmer Pesker, moved by Hoppity's powerful oration, said, "Okay, Mister Bunnikins, you may come in, but none of your children. Though I am sure you possess the cognative capacity to attack the right carrots, I have seen your children playing beyond my fence, and they are the most feeble-minded lot I have seen outside of Ireland."
"But I alone cannot face this many carrots!" exclaimed Hoppity Bunnikins. "Surely they would poke me with sticks and their pointy ends until I died, were I not to have a small army of my family alongside me."
"Very well, Hoppity Bunnikins, I will let you, and several members of your family, inside my warded gates on one condition. In an hour, I will throw two of the good carrots I have saved outside my fence, one with ink on two of its green leaves on top and one without, and you and all the members of your family you wish to bring inside my fence must eat only the one with ink on it, but not touch the other one."
This, Hoppity knew, was a receipe for disaster. For while he and one or two of his sons had self control, and while he could control several members of his family at a time, he could not convince all of them, some who were starving, not to eat the other carrot. But Hoppity had a plan. He agreed to this task, and as soon as he was out of sight, he called for two of his sons and bounded over to a special spot in the woods he knew of, there they found a small but sharp knife.
Hoppity and his sons wrapped the knife in a rope fashioned out of the entrails of one of Hoppity's less fortunate children and dragged the knife over to Farmer Pesker's garden when Pesker was inside the house, and pushed the knife through a gap in the wood of the fence near the trouble-making carrots. The wards allowed metal through them, even though it stopped rabbits and carrots, you see.
Then Hoppity ran along to where Farmer Pesker was, and shouted, saying, "Farmer Pesker! Behind you! The carrots have a knife!" And sure enough, three carrots were advancing on Farmer Pesker with a knife, clearly out for blood or sap. Farmer Pesker had been washing his windows, and did not have anything to defend himself with, so Hoppity cried, "Quick! Open the gate so that my family and I can save you! Though some of us may die, we will not flinch from a fight nor allow evil carrots to triumph over good men. Do not worry about your crops, I am certain that when we get inside, my family will work hard to remember to eat only those carrots made of evil."
So Farmer Pesker, who had been so shocked by the sight of a carrot weilding a knife that he did not stop to properly consider that it did not actually pose a threat to his life, opened his gate.
Hoppity and his family came bursting through, and quickly subdued the knife-wielding carrot and his compatriots. Years later, Hoppity swore up and down that it was while singleleggedly defeating the one with the knife that he sustained the permanent scar on his left hind leg. In fact, however, he did not acquire this scar until after, when he stumbled while attempting to dance on the lower half of the carrot's dead body and eat the top half -- as I found out one night over copious amounts amounts of alcohol. But I digress. After defeating the carrots, and with their patriarch yelping in pain, the Bunnikins family spread out and ate not only the rest of the rebel carrots, but all the other carrots, peas and lettuce Farmer Pesker had. When they had cleared out, all that was left for Farmer Pesker were the beets and a dead rabbit who had been fatally staked by the rebel carrot leader in the battle.
After all the rest of the Bunnikins had gone away to saftey, Hoppity limped back to take one last look at Farmer Pesker, who had been stuck, shocked, to where he stood during the ravishment of his land.
"Well," said Hoppity Bunnikins to Farmer Pesker, "I think most of them got the hang of it toward the end there."
The moral of this story, Hoppity claimed when he told it to me, was that the best way to make someone do what you want is to toss some philosophy and a knife to those he oppresses and wait.
However, I disagree. I believe the moral of the story is not to let the rabbit promise that he will do something later. Particularly Hoppity Bunnikins: if you did not have cash up front, it would not be worth it to sell him anything.
Before he made my acquaintance, Hoppity Bunnikins lived in a forest by the farm of a squib by the name of Farmer Pester. Farmer Pester grew the most delicious peas, beets, lettuce and ambulatory carrots, which were particularly en vogue at the turn of the century. But one year a gang of Pester's carrots went bad and started abusing the other carrots, as well as the peas and lettuce. They resisted Farmer Pester's attempts to seperate them by pelting him with tomatoes and attacking him with weapons they had fashioned from materials around the farm. One morning the words "DIE ÜBERKAROTTEN" appeared in lettuce leaves in the middle of the garden. Farmer Pester had inherited the farm from his father, a first generation wizard who lived far from the nearest wizarding farm, and it would be weeks before a Carrotmancer could arrive to calm down the Carrots, and if there was not a solution before then, he might have lost a third or more of his crop. It was on the third morning of this strife that Hoppity Bunnikins came to see Farmer Pester with a deal.
Now, Hoppity Bunnikins was a very clever rabbit who could scheme schemes no other rabbit had schemed and whose performance of the Pirate King in the 1910 Hogsmeade production of Pirates of Penzance is far and above the greatest I have ever witnessed. Hoppity Bunnikins was unlike other rabbits in other ways as well: he had a shrewd business acumen and he could talk. Well. He could also do the most hilarious extemporaneous lectures on any topic you could introduce, but that is a different story. However, like other rabbits he bore a decided affinity to breeding; we used to say that there was not a member of the family Leporidae that had not evolved from Hoppity Bunnikins. So it was that he had observed Farmer Pesker's problems for a couple of days and had schemed up a plan to feed not only himself but his prodigious family as well.
So Hoppity Bunnikin came to Farmer Pesker with a proposition. "You have a problem with ambulatory carrots, Farmer Pesker, and there is no one who is better at eliminating carrots than my children and I. Open your warded fence so that we can come in, and we will subdue your carrots for you," he said, after assuring Farmer Pesker that yes, he could talk, and that Pesker had not been driven mad.
But Farmer Pesker knew better than to let a rabbit into his garden just like that. "You think just because I cannot subdue these carrots that I am a fool?" replied Farmer Pesker. "I was not born yesterday, nor am I negroid, I will not be jewed into such a terrible mistake for nothing. Why should I let you in to eat my whole crop and ruin me?"
"But Farmer Pesker," protested Hoppity Bunnikins, "I am an honorable rabbit. If ever thou hast believed, believe me now when I say that if you let us in, your crop will be saved, except the traitor carrots which we will take away with us."
Farmer Pesker, moved by Hoppity's powerful oration, said, "Okay, Mister Bunnikins, you may come in, but none of your children. Though I am sure you possess the cognative capacity to attack the right carrots, I have seen your children playing beyond my fence, and they are the most feeble-minded lot I have seen outside of Ireland."
"But I alone cannot face this many carrots!" exclaimed Hoppity Bunnikins. "Surely they would poke me with sticks and their pointy ends until I died, were I not to have a small army of my family alongside me."
"Very well, Hoppity Bunnikins, I will let you, and several members of your family, inside my warded gates on one condition. In an hour, I will throw two of the good carrots I have saved outside my fence, one with ink on two of its green leaves on top and one without, and you and all the members of your family you wish to bring inside my fence must eat only the one with ink on it, but not touch the other one."
This, Hoppity knew, was a receipe for disaster. For while he and one or two of his sons had self control, and while he could control several members of his family at a time, he could not convince all of them, some who were starving, not to eat the other carrot. But Hoppity had a plan. He agreed to this task, and as soon as he was out of sight, he called for two of his sons and bounded over to a special spot in the woods he knew of, there they found a small but sharp knife.
Hoppity and his sons wrapped the knife in a rope fashioned out of the entrails of one of Hoppity's less fortunate children and dragged the knife over to Farmer Pesker's garden when Pesker was inside the house, and pushed the knife through a gap in the wood of the fence near the trouble-making carrots. The wards allowed metal through them, even though it stopped rabbits and carrots, you see.
Then Hoppity ran along to where Farmer Pesker was, and shouted, saying, "Farmer Pesker! Behind you! The carrots have a knife!" And sure enough, three carrots were advancing on Farmer Pesker with a knife, clearly out for blood or sap. Farmer Pesker had been washing his windows, and did not have anything to defend himself with, so Hoppity cried, "Quick! Open the gate so that my family and I can save you! Though some of us may die, we will not flinch from a fight nor allow evil carrots to triumph over good men. Do not worry about your crops, I am certain that when we get inside, my family will work hard to remember to eat only those carrots made of evil."
So Farmer Pesker, who had been so shocked by the sight of a carrot weilding a knife that he did not stop to properly consider that it did not actually pose a threat to his life, opened his gate.
Hoppity and his family came bursting through, and quickly subdued the knife-wielding carrot and his compatriots. Years later, Hoppity swore up and down that it was while singleleggedly defeating the one with the knife that he sustained the permanent scar on his left hind leg. In fact, however, he did not acquire this scar until after, when he stumbled while attempting to dance on the lower half of the carrot's dead body and eat the top half -- as I found out one night over copious amounts amounts of alcohol. But I digress. After defeating the carrots, and with their patriarch yelping in pain, the Bunnikins family spread out and ate not only the rest of the rebel carrots, but all the other carrots, peas and lettuce Farmer Pesker had. When they had cleared out, all that was left for Farmer Pesker were the beets and a dead rabbit who had been fatally staked by the rebel carrot leader in the battle.
After all the rest of the Bunnikins had gone away to saftey, Hoppity limped back to take one last look at Farmer Pesker, who had been stuck, shocked, to where he stood during the ravishment of his land.
"Well," said Hoppity Bunnikins to Farmer Pesker, "I think most of them got the hang of it toward the end there."
The moral of this story, Hoppity claimed when he told it to me, was that the best way to make someone do what you want is to toss some philosophy and a knife to those he oppresses and wait.
However, I disagree. I believe the moral of the story is not to let the rabbit promise that he will do something later. Particularly Hoppity Bunnikins: if you did not have cash up front, it would not be worth it to sell him anything.