This morning Pilou woke up with a very important idea in his head: today he is three years old. He repeated it quietly three times just to be sure. Three years old.
He came running out of his room. Mummy Rabbit was reading. “Morning, Pilou,” she said, and added nothing at all. No “happy birthday”. Nothing.
At lunchtime there were carrots, the same as every day. In the afternoon Daddy Rabbit went out shopping and said: “Whatever you do, don't go into the big burrowThe home dug under the ground where rabbits and foxes live. at the back.” Pilou nodded, and thought that was rather odd.
So Pilou went and sat by himself in front of the door. He counted the clouds. He counted eleven of them. “They forgot,” he said quietly to a pebble, because there was nobody else to say it to.
The pebble did not answer, but the wind carried a curious smell. A smell of hazelnut cake. A smell coming, as it happens, from the big burrowThe home dug under the ground where rabbits and foxes live. at the back.
Pilou crept closer on tiptoe paws. The door flew open and twenty voices shouted all at once: “SURPRISE!” There was a garlandA long decoration of paper or flowers, hung up for a celebration., a cake, his cousins, his neighbours and even the old moleA small black animal that lives under the ground and sees very poorly. from next door.
“We pretended all day long,” said Mummy Rabbit. “It was very, very hard.” “I nearly told you at breakfast,” admitted Daddy Rabbit.
Pilou blew out his three candles in one go. He had thought everyone forgot him, when really they had been thinking about him since morning, in secret. That is what a surprise is: love hiding for a little while.
The end, sweet dreams.
