A few days later, I had this feeling that I should go back to the rabbit. On the way to the warren, I wondered why we had two eyes and two ears. I tried to imagine having an eye on one side of my head and an ear on the other, when the answer came to me - it was obvious - we wouldn't look even. If we only had one eye, it would have to be in the middle of our forehead, so where would you put an ear?
. . .
The rabbit was there.
"I'm sorry. It just slipped out," I said apologetically, recalling my verbal blunder the last time I'd seen the rabbit.
"Hm!" uttered the rabbit unamused.
"Why do we have two eyes? Do you know?" I asked trying to change the rabbit's mood.
"Pick up that stone in front of you." said the rabbit.
I looked down at the stone and reached out and picked it up.
"Now put it back."
I put it back.
"Now, close one eye."
I covered my right eye.
"Don't cover it - close it," suggested the rabbit.
"I can't," I said, squinting, trying to close one eye and keeping the other open.
"All right, cover it up."
"Now what," I asked.
"Now pick up the stone."
I closed my fingers around the stone, except that the stone wasn't between my fingers. I reached further until I touched the stone.
"That's weird."
"Your brain takes the images from both eyes and can calculate distances. With one eye closed, everything appears flat. It's the difference between monocular and binocular vision."
"Oh, I see, I think. But what about you. Your eyes are on the side of your face. How can you see things with both eyes?"
"You mean, do I have binocular vision?"
"Yes - that as well!"
"Have you watched a chicken peck at grain?" asked the rabbit.
"Yes. My nanna has some hens in her farmyard," I stated.
"Have you watched them? They don't have binocular vision. They tilt their heads on one side to see a grain of food with one eye. Then they tilt their heads the other way to see the same grain with the other eye. Then their brain takes the memory of both views of the same grain and calculates where it actually is. Then the chicken reaches down and pecks it."
At this point I saw no reason to want my eyes on the side of my face. "Do all birds eat like that?"
"Most do, some don't - owls, falcons and hawks don't. They have binocular vision. They hunt rabbits."
"What happens if the food moves between looking at it with each eye? Like a worm for instance. Once it knows it's been seen by one eye, it's goin' to move pretty fast before it gets seen by the other eye, ain't it?"
"It may sound like a hit-and-miss process, but you get good at it. Think about when you eat. You cannot see your mouth, yet you always manage to get food into your mouth, don't you?"
"When my sister was a baby, she used to miss a lot. She used to stick her spoon into her cheek, but she eventually found her mouth. Now she only misses sometimes. But you know something. She always knows where her mouth is when she screams. She never screamed out of her cheek or anything."
The rabbit laughed. "Yes - sound."
"Boy, can she scream," I added.
"It's the same with sound and hearing," continued the rabbit.
"What is?"
"You have those poor excuses for ears, but you do have two of them, and depending upon what your brain receives from your ears, it can determine the direction from where the sound is coming from. That's called stereo-sound."
I wasn't going to mention taste, although I knew that snakes had two tongues and tongues were used for tasting.
"I've got two nostrils. Do I have stereo-smell?"
"I doubt whether you have," commented the rabbit. "But I can tell from which direction a smell is emanating after I have taken into consideration the direction and the relative speed of the wind."
"You can?"
"Yes! Foxes sneak up on us, but we can smell them."
I counted off on my fingers as I spoke. "You mentioned looking and hearing and feeling and smelling and the other one." I didn't want to mention 'tasting.' "That's five, and common sense which is the seventh - what about number six?"
"Ah, yes! Your sixth sense -- gut-feel, intuition and premonitions. You'll sometimes know something when there is no evident reason for you to know it, except that you just know."
"I've never experienced that before," I confessed.
"What caused you to come to our warren today?" inquired the rabbit.
"I don't know. I just had a feeling that I should come."
"I see," said the rabbit. "And you have never experienced feelings like that before?"
"Oh! Was that my sixth sense?"
"Possibly."
"Are there any other senses?"
"Yes - there is the sense of orientation. We rabbits know when we are upside down."
"Everybody knows when they're upside down," I commented.
"You might think so, but a sense of balance is also important otherwise, you wouldn't be able to stand up without falling over."
"I don't fall over, so I've got that sense," I said, pleased that I had something I hadn't realised that I had.
"Then there's a sense of direction. That's important, especially to migratory animals."
"What are those?"
"Animals that need to know where they're going," explained the rabbit.
"I know where I'm going. Do I have that sense?"
"We'll pretend that you do," said the rabbit. "It helps to prevent you from getting lost."
"Mum said to me and my sister that if we ever got lost we should look for a policeman."
"Sounds like good advice," said the rabbit approvingly.
"I thought it was, but when we were shopping once, I went and found a policeman and told him that I was lost, thinking that my mum would be pleased."
"Was she?"
"No. She told the policeman that I had absolutely no sense."
"It's a good job that the policeman had a sense of humour," smiled the rabbit.
"Are there any other senses?" I asked.
"Of course. Some animals can sense various things, but those don't necessarily apply to you. You just concentrate on the important ones."
"Well I can see, hear, touch, smell and, you know..."
"Taste?"
"Yes, so I know all those, so what? What's it all mean?"
"It means people take these vital senses for granted, and consequently, you can use them to your advantage."
This was starting to make sense. It had the makings of something interesting, so I set myself to pay more attention, but the rabbit said, "Come back tomorrow, and we'll talk more. On the way home, think about this - nearly everything you describe, you describe using one or more of your main senses."
"I can't come back tomorrow 'cause we're going to get a dog."
Suddenly I was alone - again! This was not the right thing to say to a rabbit.
"But I wouldn't bring it here!" I called down the tunnel.
'I've got to practice this seventh sense,' I thought to myself.
. . .
The next chapter is coming soon