"Can we have a vote on that?" asked the mayor.

"Absolutely ridiculous!" said all the townsfolk.

"So we are all agreed?" said the butcher, "The situation is now absolutely ridiculous. Please enter that in the minutes."

"We have to send these two men away. Far away!" stormed the butcher's wife.

"Far, far, far away," said all the townsfolk, saying the word "far" so many times it sounded like a waterfall.

"Can we have a vote on that?" asked the mayor, who was sitting up really straight so he would look more important.

The secretary wrote what the people had agreed on in the book, underlining the words "absolutely ridiculous" so as not to miss it in the next reading of the minutes, and the meeting was adjourned.

Three weeks later, when it seemed that nothing was ever going to change, the weather turned nasty (not that weather can really do that because ducks and fish don't mind a pot of rain), and the sky turned dark with clouds. Lightning flashed and trees split in half, sometimes out of sheer fright. Several neighborhood rivers ran high and everyone stayed warm and snug inside their houses . . . except for Ivan and Belowski, who went out in the worst weather you can imagine, hopping and shooting, shooting and hopping, day after day, taking turns at being the giant bunny and turns at being the hunter, until the storm passed over and the sun came out again.

Ivan was on one side of a bright, green field, and Belowski was on the other. They had both forgotten which day it was, because the lightning had flashed a lot and mixed them up, so they were both dressed as rabbits.

"Come here and fight like a man!" shouted the Russian rabbit.

"I will twist your ears into knots!" shouted the common grey rabbit.

"You have the heart of an ant, and the face of a pig!" shouted one.

"I would not scrape you off my boots!" shouted the other.

While they shouted rather colorful abuse at each other, a small, not-too-big, not-too-small, and definitely