The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies

For all little friends
of
Mr. McGregor & Peter & Benjamin

A man with a long white beard, wearing a brown suit with a brown flat cap and carrying a brown sack, walks down a garden path towards a red brick wall. Next to the path are flowerbeds and trees. Lettuces have been planted in the nearest bed, and from among them peek out a host of rabbits.
Six bunnies lie asleep on their backs in a circle around the only surviving lettuce plant in the bed.

It is said that the effect of eating too much lettuce is “soporific.”

I have never felt sleepy after eating lettuces; but then I am not a rabbit.

They certainly had a very soporific effect upon the Flopsy Bunnies!

When Benjamin Bunny grew up, he married his Cousin Flopsy. They had a large family, and they were very improvident and cheerful.

I do not remember the separate names of their children; they were generally called the “Flopsy Bunnies.”

Benjamin Bunny sits next to the entrance of the burrow in his red jacket and smokes a pipe. On the other side of the entrance sits Flopsy wearing a blue pinafore. A couple of the children are trying to play with her, while the rest run around and hide from each other.
Benjamin with a basket and Flopsy with a string bag walk along a grassy path next to a fence. The Flopsy Bunnies run at their feet. On the other side of the fence, Peter Rabbit is digging in his vegetable garden.

As there was not always quite enough to eat⁠—Benjamin used to borrow cabbages from Flopsy’s brother, Peter Rabbit, who kept a nursery garden.

Sometimes Peter Rabbit had no cabbages to spare.

Benjamin pulls himself up on the fence to talk to Peter Rabbit, who gestures at his cabbage stalks that are missing their leaves. Behind him, his mother spreads her dress wide to conceal the cabbage leaves behind her, and a basket next to her is covering more cabbages.
The Flopsy Bunnies run across a field towards a stone wall, followed by Benjamin Bunny.

When this happened, the Flopsy Bunnies went across the field to a rubbish heap, in the ditch outside Mr. McGregor’s garden.

Mr. McGregor’s rubbish heap was a mixture. There were jam pots and paper bags, and mountains of chopped grass from the mowing machine (which always tasted oily), and some rotten vegetable marrows and an old boot or two. One day⁠—oh joy!⁠—there were a quantity of overgrown lettuces, which had “shot” into flower.

The Flopsy Bunnies cluster around a patch of yellowing lettuce and start munching.
The Flopsy Bunnies have laid down on the grass and gone to sleep, one with a paper bag on its head.

The Flopsy Bunnies simply stuffed lettuces. By degrees, one after another, they were overcome with slumber, and lay down in the mown grass.

Benjamin was not so much overcome as his children. Before going to sleep he was sufficiently wide awake to put a paper bag over his head to keep off the flies.

The little Flopsy Bunnies slept delightfully in the warm sun. From the lawn beyond the garden came the distant clacketty sound of the mowing machine. The bluebottles buzzed about the wall, and a little old mouse picked over the rubbish among the jam pots.

(I can tell you her name, she was called Thomasina Tittlemouse, a wood mouse with a long tail.)

Thomasina Tittlemouse sniffs at a jam pot on which a black fly is sitting. Behind her lie a couple of sleeping bunnies on the grass.
Benjamin Bunnie wakes up and pulls the paper bag up to look out at Thomasina Tittlemouse, who is now standing on the jam pot.

She rustled across the paper bag, and awakened Benjamin Bunny.

The mouse apologized profusely, and said that she knew Peter Rabbit.

While she and Benjamin were talking, close under the wall, they heard a heavy tread above their heads; and suddenly Mr. McGregor emptied out a sackful of lawn mowings right upon the top of the sleeping Flopsy Bunnies! Benjamin shrank down under his paper bag. The mouse hid in a jam pot.

Mr. McGregor sack is just visible as he empties grass mowings over the sleeping bunnies. The bunnies’ ears are poking out of the cut grass as Thomasina Tittlemouse dives into the jam pot.
Mr. McGregor in his black boots stands above the pile of grass mowings. The bunnies’ ears are still poking out.

The little rabbits smiled sweetly in their sleep under the shower of grass; they did not awake because the lettuces had been so soporific.

They dreamt that their mother Flopsy was tucking them up in a hay bed.

Mr. McGregor looked down after emptying his sack. He saw some funny little brown tips of ears sticking up through the lawn mowings. He stared at them for some time.

Presently a fly settled on one of them and it moved.

Mr. McGregor climbed down on to the rubbish heap⁠—

“One, two, three, four! five! six leetle rabbits!” said he as he dropped them into his sack. The Flopsy Bunnies dreamt that their mother was turning them over in bed. They stirred a little in their sleep, but still they did not wake up.

Mr. McGregor carefully places the sleeping bunnies into his sack.
Mr. McGregor stands on a stone wall overlooking a grass meadow and ties up the sack.

Mr. McGregor tied up the sack and left it on the wall.

He went to put away the mowing machine.

While he was gone, Mrs. Flopsy Bunny (who had remained at home) came across the field.

She looked suspiciously at the sack and wondered where everybody was?

Flopsy stands on her own on a wide grassy path and stares at a white farmhouse at the end.
Benjamin is wringing his paws, while Flopsy covers her face and cries. In front of them lies the sack, which Thomasina Tittlemouse is standing up against. Through a small hole at the bottom of the bag a pair of bunny ears are poking out.

Then the mouse came out of her jam pot, and Benjamin took the paper bag off his head, and they told the doleful tale.

Benjamin and Flopsy were in despair, they could not undo the string.

But Mrs. Tittlemouse was a resourceful person. She nibbled a hole in the bottom corner of the sack.

The little rabbits were pulled out and pinched to wake them.

Their parents stuffed the empty sack with three rotten vegetable marrows, an old blacking-brush and two decayed turnips.

The Flopsy Bunnies yawn and stretch, while Thomasina Tittlemouse tries to wake the last one asleep. Benjamin and Flopsy look through the contents of the sack; two turnips have already been pulled out.
The Flopsy Bunnies look out over a flowerbed from underneath a rhododendron bush.

Then they all hid under a bush and watched for Mr. McGregor.

Mr. McGregor came back and picked up the sack, and carried it off.

He carried it hanging down, as if it were rather heavy.

The Flopsy Bunnies followed at a safe distance.

The Flopsy Bunnies carefully follow Mr. McGregor as he walks under a rose trellis and down a path that runs between two flowerbeds.
Benjamin and Flopsy stand on the path, watching Mr. McGregor turn the corner at the end. Next to them sit four of the Flopsy Bunnies, and two more peek out from behind the low box hedges which edge the path.

They watched him go into his house.

And then they crept up to the window to listen.

Mr. McGregor threw down the sack on the stone floor in a way that would have been extremely painful to the Flopsy Bunnies, if they had happened to have been inside it.

They could hear him drag his chair on the flags, and chuckle⁠—

“One, two, three, four, five, six leetle rabbits!” said Mr. McGregor.

The Flopsy Bunnies cluster around the flowerbeds filled with roses and the blue door of Mr. McGregor’s house.
The Flopsy Bunnies stand up and listen in through the open window, which is surrounded by ivy growing up the walls.

“Eh? What’s that? What have they been spoiling now?” enquired Mrs. McGregor.

“One, two, three, four, five, six leetle fat rabbits!” repeated Mr. McGregor, counting on his fingers⁠—“one, two, three⁠—”

“Don’t you be silly; what do you mean, you silly old man?”

“In the sack! one, two, three, four, five, six!” replied Mr. McGregor.

(The youngest Flopsy Bunny got upon the windowsill.)

Mrs. McGregor took hold of the sack and felt it. She said she could feel six, but they must be old rabbits, because they were so hard and all different shapes.

“Not fit to eat; but the skins will do fine to line my old cloak.”

“Line your old cloak?” shouted Mr. McGregor⁠—“I shall sell them and buy myself baccy!”

“Rabbit tobacco! I shall skin them and cut off their heads.”

Two of the Flopsy Bunnies start to climb in through the open window. They’re slightly hidden behind a geranium with red flowers in a red flowerpot.
Several of the Flopsy Bunnies look in through the open window, past the geranium, to the figure of Mrs. McGregor in the room.

Mrs. McGregor untied the sack and put her hand inside.

When she felt the vegetables she became very very angry. She said that Mr. McGregor had “done it a purpose.”

And Mr. McGregor was very angry too. One of the rotten marrows came flying through the kitchen window, and hit the youngest Flopsy Bunny.

It was rather hurt.

The youngest Flopsy Bunny, who is wearing a blue ribbon around their neck, is knocked from the brick windowsill by a flying vegetable, to the surprise of their two siblings below.

Then Benjamin and Flopsy thought that it was time to go home.

Benjamin and Flopsy hurry back through the garden. Flopsy is carrying the youngest Flopsy Bunny, and the rest run after her. A robin looks down from the top of the rose trellis.
Thomasina Tittlemouse wears a warm fur coat, with a red ribbon tied around her head.

So Mr. McGregor did not get his tobacco, and Mrs. McGregor did not get her rabbit skins.

But next Christmas Thomasina Tittlemouse got a present of enough rabbit-wool to make herself a cloak and a hood, and a handsome muff and a pair of warm mittens.