The Tale of Mr. Tod
Beatrix Potter loved the countryside and she spent much of
her otherwise conventional Victorian childhood drawing and studying animals. Her passion for the
natural world lay behind the creation of her famous series of little books. A particular source of
inspiration was the English Lake District where she lived for the last thirty years of her life as a
farmer and land conservationist, working with the National Trust.
The Tale of Mr. Tod brings back Beatrix Potter’s most popular heroes, Peter Rabbit and Benjamin Bunny, in a new adventure that also features two particularly “disagreeable” villains. Fortunately Tommy Brock the badger and Mr. Tod the fox dislike each other so much that when Tommy Brock kidnaps Benjamin’s young family, Mr. Tod unwittingly becomes the rabbits’ ally.
www.peterrabbit.com
for francis william of ulva
– someday!
I
have made many books about well-behaved people. Now, for a change, I am
going to make a story about two disagreeable people, called Tommy Brock and Mr. Tod.
Nobody could call Mr. Tod “nice”. The rabbits could not bear him; they could smell him
half a mile off. He was of a wandering habit and he had foxy whiskers; they never knew where he would be
next.
One day he was living in a stick-house in the coppice, causing terror to the family of
old Mr. Benjamin Bouncer. Next day he moved into a pollard willow near the lake, frightening the wild ducks
and the water rats.
In winter and early spring he might generally be found in an earth amongst the rocks
at the top of Bull Banks, under Oatmeal Crag.
He had half a dozen houses, but he was seldom at home.
The houses were not always empty when Mr. Tod moved out; because sometimes Tommy Brock moved in; (without
asking leave).
Tommy Brock was a short bristly fat waddling person with a grin; he grinned all over
his face. He was not nice in his habits. He ate wasp nests and frogs and worms; and he waddled about by
moonlight, digging things up.
His clothes were very dirty; and as he slept in the day-time, he always went to bed in
his boots. And the bed which he went to bed in, was generally Mr. Tod’s.
Now Tommy Brock did occasionally eat rabbit-pie; but it was only very little young
ones occasionally, when other food was really scarce. He was friendly with old Mr. Bouncer; they agreed in
disliking the wicked otters and Mr. Tod; they often talked over that
painful subject.
Old Mr. Bouncer was stricken in years. He sat in the spring sunshine outside the
burrow, in a muffler; smoking a pipe of rabbit-tobacco.
He lived with his son Benjamin Bunny and his daughter-in-law Flopsy, who had a young
family. Old Mr. Bouncer was in charge of the family that afternoon, because Benjamin and Flopsy had gone
out.
The little rabbit babies were just old enough to open their blue eyes and kick. They
lay in a fluffy bed of rabbit wool and hay, in a shallow burrow, separate from the main rabbit-hole. To tell
the truth — old Mr. Bouncer had forgotten them.
He sat in the sun, and conversed cordially with Tommy Brock, who was passing through
the wood with a sack and a little spud which he used for digging, and some mole traps.
He complained bitterly about the scarcity of pheasants’
eggs, and accused Mr.
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