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The other evening Bertha and me was sittin' around doing nothing in particular, except I was finishing up my morning cup of Madura green tea, which it goes without saying is necessary to sustaining life. I was wishin I had cut more chunks for the fireplace, which I would have of course wasn't it for having so much other work to do with the kennels and hounds and all, when right out of the clear she says, "Seth, I hear Pearly Walsh's old pickup comin' up the road. So we're about to have a visit." She has got the ears of a deer, and can hear stuff I wouldn't never know about if she wasn't around to clue me in. Sure enough, Pearly's old Ford pickup rattled into the driveway, and he and Ephraim climbed out and strolled over to the door.

I says, "Boys, come right on in and take a chair, I was hopin' you might drop by, there's something puzzling that I'd like to get your opinion on. It's been on my mind for a while now, but whenever we get together we usually end up talking on other important subjects and get driven off of our kill, so to speak. But I think you may have experienced something like has happened to Bertha and me a few times and that you might be interested in hearing about." Just then Bertha came from the kitchen carrying a plate of fresh baked cookies, and as the saying

apparently not realizing that there are a lot less hostile places that they could safely and more comfortably call home where they could make themselves some choice nests."

Pearly broke in to say, "Excuse me, Seth, but I've been meaning to tell you fellows about that very sort of a weird thing myself, because I've become certain that my hounds are not losin' the trail of the rabbits up in that back country. Them rabbits are just plain disappearing right into nowhere! I know it sounds as crazy as a backhouse rat so I haven't said nothing about it because I figured that if I did it might get out somehow and next thing that would happen them mental health folks would be knockin' at my door with all their paperwork and I would have to answer to a lot of foolish questions that nobody knows the right answers to anyway. The rabbits in that area are just plain vanishing, as I'm sure you will agree when you hear the details of what I'm about to tell you.

"Here's what happened. When it last snowed I was runnin' some hounds up there above the gulch and all of a sudden the rabbit they was trailin' just plain did a fade into nowhere. I mean, that critter melted or evaporated right off from the earth. He wasn't nowhere to be found at all any more. And as if that wasn't strange enough…"

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goes, we turned our attention to the subject most at hand.

"This thing has happened a few times," I explained, right when Bertha and me has been runnin' hounds up in Croaker's Gulch," Which as you both know is the hangout of those two old trickster rabbits we often encounter in that remote area--which is just south of nowhere in particular. Anyway, up there on the ridge above what we call, "The Gulch," there have been some strange goings-on that most folks would be inclined to call mysterious and I thought we might ponder on 'em together to see what we can come up with."

"Several times recently when we have run a few of our hounds up there, a strange thing has happened: the rabbits have actually disappeared during the chase! If that sounds weird to you, figure how strange it is to see it happen right before your eyes. Now, I don't mean to say that the hounds have lost the trail, nor that either Bosco nor Scarlet O'Hare have disappeared, because I'm sure that if they was both to be swept up in a tornado they'd light down on all fours, relaxed and chewin' on a carrot or somethin'. That's the kind of charmed lives those critters lead. But now I am referring to just your average run-of-the patch rabbits that hang out up in that high country,