The Rabbit Who Overcame Fear/The Hunter and the Quail
Alternative Title
Abstract
This CD-Rom, produced together with a coloring book containing the texts, presents the stories in two booklets with these same titles published earlier. There are several voices--poorly recorded--with music and good sound effects. The first is the standard tale of the timid rabbit who hears the thud of a ripe mango dropping and thinks it is the end of the world. On the CD-Rom, the rabbit is female, while the book's rabbit is male. The accent here is on the altruism of the lion who stops the animals from running off a cliff into the sea. "The Sage" is a wise quail who lives happily with his family in a deep forest. A clever bird-hunter lures the quails with clever calls and throws nets over them. The Sage suggests to his family that, when trapped by the hunter's net, they should poke their heads through an opening and then beat their "wings in a flurry and take to the air." They do what is suggested and it succeeds. They come down over a thorn bush and can wriggle out underneath the net and bush. After some recurrences, the hunter's wife chides him upon his empty-handed return home. The hunter answers that soon enough the spirit of cooperation will dwindle among the quail, and he will be bringing home prey again. He turns out to be right. The Sage takes his family away to safety, but those remaining bicker and are taken. "So it was in ancient times that quarreling birds were captured by the hunters, but those who learned to work together could escape the cleverest foe.