Why The Deer's Teeth Are Blunt
: CHEROKEE TALES: Indian Legends Retold
Although it was not the Deer's fault that the Rabbit lost the prize,
the Rabbit was greatly provoked and laid his plans to get even.
Cutting a stout grapevine almost in two with his teeth, he laid it
across the Deer's path and began leaping back and forth, snapping at
the vine.
"What are you doing that for?" asked the Deer, when he caught him at
this game.
"Only look! I can bite
sharp teeth," replied the Rabbit.
"Let me see you do it," the Deer suggested.
So the Rabbit sprang at the vine and bit it in two, where it was
already almost cut through. "You cannot do anything like that," he
declared proudly.
"If you can do it, I am sure I can," the Deer insisted, and the Rabbit
made haste to drag forward a heavy vine. The Deer leaped at it and
tried to bite it as the other had done, but caught his heels and fell
headlong. Again and again he tried without success.
"My friend," put in the Rabbit, who had been looking on and pretending
to sympathize, "how can you expect to bite anything in two with such
blunt teeth as you have? Just let me file them for you a bit, and they
will soon be as sharp as mine."
The Deer was hot and embarrassed and very foolishly gave his consent.
Thereupon the sly Rabbit got a rough stone and filed off the Deer's
teeth almost down to the gums, so that he could not bite off anything
at all.
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