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At the foot of the meadow there was a river, and in the river there was an otter. This was well known to the bunnies who nibbled the clover hereabouts. Maybe it was a different otter sometimes, as many generations of bunnies had come and gone, but just as there were always skulking foxes and sharp-eyed hawks to watch out for, there was always at least one otter in the river.

To most bunnies the otter, like the river, was just part of the background. Few paid any attention to the water-weasel, which spent the day in the water and only came up on shore to sleep in a den taken from a family of muskrats.

When a bunny did speak to the otter, it was generally transactional. There was an island bunnies like to visit, and the otter was the only good way to get there. A bunny could swim, but most were swept downriver and drowned. The otter was a safer way to get there, they thought. Only just, it turned out, because about half the bunnies it carried across the river arrived at the island in its stomach.

This is not well known among the bunnies. It is hard to tell your friends an otter is untrustworthy from inside the otter, so they continued to ask for the ride, and some of them even made it to the island undigested.

A few of them knew, though, and it was one of those that talked to the otter that morning.

"Good morning," said the rabbit doe to the otter. It was grooming its fur to ready itself for its morning swim when she hopped up.

"Good morning," said the otter, who was making sure his fur was properly oily by rubbing his cheek glands against himself. Without oil his fur would let water in and a cold otter is a dead otter.

"I cannot take you to the island yet," chirped the otter. "Maybe in a little while."

"I do not want to go to the island," the rabbit doe said. "I want to talk."

"Talk away then," chirped the otter, and continued to groom himself.

"You ate my sister," said the doe.

"Did I," said the otter, who suddenly lost interest in grooming. He judged the distance between himself and the rabbit, but she was alert and stayed out of lunge range. Had she been a little closer the issue of her knowing something she shouldn't would be swiftly resolved and he'd have his breakfast, too.

"I don't blame you," said the bunny. "It's your nature to eat meat. Sometimes that meat is bunnies."

"All right," chirped the otter. "Why tell me then?"

"I don't blame you," said the doe. "But I blame the buck who fed her to you."

"I'm sorry," said the otter, "but I don't know who you mean. No offense, but rabbits all look the same to me."

"Oh, you know him," said the doe. "He has fed many rabbits to you. He sends them down to catch a ride to the island and when you return, fat with your meal, then he has you carry him across."

"Oh, him," chirped the otter. "I just thought he was clever. He knows to be the second one to cross."

"He is clever," said the doe. "And I want you to eat him the next time you meet him."

"He always waits until I have eaten to cross," chirped the otter. "And from what you say, he sends me many of my meals."

"There will always be someone to send you meals," said the doe. "Once someone knows about you, the idea of sending someone else first is obvious."

The otter nodded. "There have been other bunnies who did it, and other otters before me. It usually happens, my mother said. But why should I take that chance?"

"Lie on your back," said the doe, "And I will show you why."

Curious, the otter did, and she crept up cautiously from his tail end until she could reach his belly. She put both forepaws on the long ridge that led up his belly and began to knead.

"It will not work," chirped the otter. "I have tried this with a friendly she-rabbit before and it did not fit."

"Shut up and see," said the doe, and he did, because he was stiff under her paws and as his sheath began to retract she lowered her muzzle and licked.

Soon thereafter the rabbit had a belly full of otter instead of the usual circumstance where the opposite was true. Promised future visits like this one, the water-weasel agreed to her request.

And so a little later that day the wise buck up on the hill pointed a paw toward the river and a younger rabbit hopped down to talk to the otter. The two set off across the water toward the island, the rabbit clinging to the otter's back. The buck up on the hill nodded when he heard a startled, suddenly cutoff shriek, and looked up in time to see the otter bolting down the young bunny. There was a last flash of white hindpaws as the otter snapped shut its jaws, a gulp, and then instead of two creatures in the water there was only one.

The wise buck met the otter at the shore and considered the new bulge in its long body. This wasn't the first rabbit he sacrificed to get a ride across the river. It wasn't even the hundredth.

The swallowed bunny squirmed beneath the otter's fur as he climbed onto its back. All this had happened before. What happened next was new. They reached the deepest part of the cold swift river and the otter unexpectedly sank out from under him.

"Hey!" The buck squawked, and got a mouthful of water for his trouble. The cold water soaked his fur and the swift current took hold, sweeping him away from the shore. There was no sign of the otter.

Then there was. As he thrashed in the water, trying to paddle to the shore before he was swept over the weir below the island, a set of fanged jaws closed over his haunches.

The buck's eyes went wide as the otter's jaws lurched upward. He couldn't see it, but he'd sent enough bunnies down its gullet to know what was happening. He kicked his hindpaws in its gullet as it ratcheted its jaws over his rump and then with a great gulp he was sliding in.

"No!" It didn't pull him under and on the shore he saw another bunny. He didn't recognize him or her and they were too far away to help. Just the same he cried out.

The other bunny just watched as the otter's wide-stretched jaws heaved out of the water. He was larger than the does and young bunnies he usually sent its way and it seemed almost to gag before swallowing with all its might. Powerful and well practiced throat muscles that had sent dozens of bunnies to their doom gripped his haunches and sent them down the otter's throat.

"Why?" The buck thrashed at the water and pushed ineffectually at the otter's chin as he was eaten. "We had a deal!"

Fangs scraped through his fur. All the otter need do now is bite down hard and he'd be pierced by its sharp canine teeth. Instead its muzzle lurched upward and the buck found himself staring past its fangs at the distant rabbit.

"We had a deal," he gasped, and then the light was cut off in a jagged line as the otter closed its mouth. It tensed, swallowed with all its might, swallowed again as he stuck in its throat, and he found himself sliding rump-first into its stomach.

The otter's ribs creaked and groaned as it ate him. Alone he was a sizable meal and he wasn't alone. He squeezed into the stomach to join a doe two thirds his size, the doe he'd helpfully told to ask the otter for a ride across the river. They both got the ride as the swollen water-weasel paddled awkwardly toward the shore.

"You!" Snapped the doe, slick with slime from being swallowed and stung all over by stomach acids after her brief time here, but still alive. She recognized him by his scent though they were in the stomach rump to nose. "This is your fault!"

Her muzzle was against his groin, just as the other doe was with the otter earlier. The otter had been very happy with what the doe did then. The buck on the other hand, wasn't. Her teeth crunched down on the buck's delicate bits and he let out a wordless shriek of agony.

The struggle inside the otter was unpleasant. Unpleasant for the otter, even more so for the bunnies inside him. The great bulge in the otter's long body changed shape as the two rabbits kicked and bit at each other. They knew there was no escape from the slimy digestive trap and took it out on each other. Their thrashing bruised the otter from the inside and made him twitch uncontrollably as he swam. It was fortunate he was close to the shore by the time it started.

By the time the otter managed to drag himself heavily onto the grass, it was nearly over. Wrapped tightly in stretched stomach the bunnies used up their air fighting each other. As the short-legged water weasel emerged dripping from the river and flopped on his side, the long bulge in his noodley body was all but still.

He was lying there still when the doe who engineered it all hopped over. The otter lay there panting, the frantic struggle inside him diminished to feeble squirming. Soon it would stop altogether and only the slow gurgle of digestion would remain. Bruised inside from the kicks of the dying bunnies, the otter groaned.

"Sorry," said the doe to the bulge that swelled the otter's long body. Two bunnies, one larger than the other, filled the water weasel's gut. She poked the bulge of larger one's head with a forepaw. "He got a better deal."

"It doesn't feel like a better deal," the otter groaned. "I should have stuck with eating just one bunny."

"Don't worry," said the doe. "This, too, shall pass." She found the long ridge in the otter's belly fur, stretched now over the lower part of the belly bulge, and began to lick. The otter, bruised and tired, found his mood brightening, and the whole sorry affair soon worked out well for everyone.

Almost everyone. The otter let out a long belch as the last struggle inside him ended and shortly thereafter followed it with a shuddering growl. The doe hopped away, her rabbit belly full once again of otter rather than the usual other-way-around, and the otter settled down to digest his huge meal.

And so it was that there was a new head rabbit in that part of the meadow, and a new bunny who knew the habits of the otter and directed other rabbits to him for passage to the island.

More rabbits learned things about the otter and survived the experience, because the doe told her friends how to pay for passage to the island with something other than their entire body. The otter would accept merely part of a bunny's body as payment, usually just paws and a mouth, but occasionally an adventurous bunny, whether male or female, would offer something more. In any event, however pleasant or painful the experience for the bunny, they'd get a trip to the island, have their clover, and then pay for a return trip in much the same way. It was a good deal for everyone.

Almost everyone. The bunnies who knew the secret kept it, as the island could only support so many hungry mouths. Many more bunnies weren't in on it.

"Enough of that," said the doe, who now ran this part of the meadow. A strong young buck was determined to have his way with her, but she had her pick of strong young bucks and he didn't meet her standards.

"If you want me, you'll have to do something for me," she said to him. "Go to that island," she pointed a paw, "and bring me back a big mouthful of sweet clover."

The buck stared doubtfully down the slope. "The river is deep and swift and cold," he said. "My dam said never to swim in it."

"Ah, there is an answer for that," said the doe. "Go down to the shore and ask the otter to carry you across. See, there is his wake in the water. Go to the shore, he'll come to talk to you."

And so the buck, who didn't think to ask certain vital questions and lacked certain vital information, hopped down to the shore. More bunnies made their way to and from the island these days, it was true. But if they didn't know the right questions to ask and the right favors to offer the otter, they still often arrived there in his stomach.