It’s been a few years since I read Watership Down by Richard Adams, but recently had a hankering for another epic adventure in the style of that bunnies’ tale. This story about two dogs and a fox on the run in the British countryside was a satisfying answer to that hankering.

I’m not normally interested in animal stories. I don’t like the simplistic animal-characters-in-a-human-world structures of some popular books, like The Wind in the Willows or the lesser-known Bird Life in Wington. I’m also not a huge fan of the more fanciful styles, like Brian Jacques’ Redwall series, a well-written tale for sure, just not to my taste.

There’s something about Adams’ style, though, that feels almost anti-fantasy, starring animals as animals, naked and living by instinct yet with consciousness and personalities… like real animals. It’s far easier to read. I get a sense in these books of James Michener for some reason.

In this adventure, we get to know Rowf and Snitter, two dogs who have escaped from a sketchy research lab where they had undergone horrendous testing by the “white coats.” In their escape, it’s possible that they had come in contact with rats and fleas infected with the bubonic plague, hence the book’s title. When the public gets wind of their escape, the dogs are hunted not just as nuisances that happen to kill local sheep and chickens but as dangerous animals that might start an epidemic.

Along the way, the dogs befriend a sly fox named “tod” as well as a few other animals, but even in these relationships, issues of distrust exist. As can be imagined in a book about dogs, loyalty and love are key themes in this book, which can be seen in their relationships with each other and with the humans that also fill these pages. This is as much a story of humanity’s relationship with animals as it is a tale about the animals themselves.

In fact, one of my favorite parts of the book is when a couple of men discuss the virtues and non- of that author, Richard Adams, and his story about rabbits. I thought it was a clever way for Adams to respond to critics he likely had, explaining why he personified his creatures and brought them to life the way he did, giving them real problems and struggles that are almost human yet not.

Alongside this interesting discussion was another one late in the book about a father whose daughter sat dying from a disease but who had hope of a cure from the medication she took, medicine that necessarily had to have been first tested on animals. As much as this man loved animals, he asked rhetorically what father wouldn’t do anything, even such painful testing against animals, to see that his own daughter lived?

It’s an argument that makes good sense to me, as a father and a pet-owner (and a Christian, I’ll add), but I wonder how vilified that statement would be today by those who continue to be swayed by our world’s illogical trends in thinking. After all, our nation celebrates the right to murder a human baby in the womb and yet fines upwards of $120k and imprisons anyone who destroys the egg of a bald eagle. Where’s the sense in that? I hate to even write the comparison. It’s not like I hate bald eagles and would give anything for an American omelet! But, God knows I love human life a billion times more! There is no comparison. While I understand that this world has been blinded by Satan and sin, and while I understand that people will do anything to convince themselves that God doesn’t exist, I still can’t grasp how we’ve come to this point.

Ok, that’s not at all what was going through my mind as I read the book, only now after I’ve let it steep a bit. The book itself was fantastic, and while I probably enjoyed Watership Down slightly more, that says nothing against this one. I’m glad I read it, and I have no reason not to read something else by Adams in the future.

©2022 E.T.