Rabbit Snow

This is a story that was shared by Deborah Audibert from the Tobique First Nations. Tara Audibert remembers growing up listening to this story.

You can see a sample in game here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kX0ak7zPRhg&t=162s

The creator tried to protect animals and one of the animals that he wanted to help out was the rabbit because they have no way of defending themselves except for running and hiding. So in the wintertime, the rabbits change color from brown to white so that they can blend in with the snow. But the other thing is the tracks. The tracks that rabbits make are really big and so the creator made big white snow flakes to help the rabbit out.

"A rabbit in Maliseet is mahtoqehs. So Mo-Mo said, it’s mahtoqehs psan. Mahtoqehs

is the rabbit and p-san is snow. So it’s “rabbit snow”. That’s exactly what it is.

And it’s not in the shape of rabbits, it’s to cover the tracks of rabbits, when it

snow’s like that. SO that’s what. That’s the thing.

It’s really, like if you think about it, it’s smart, like, Creator was smart in doing that,

because of the rabbit’s no way to defend itself, except for running and hiding, he

covered both, and again like, if it just snows, it will eventually cover the rabbits

tracks but, when it snows these big big flakes, and there’s a bunch of them, the

tracks are covered more easily.

So if anybody’s tracking rabbits then the snow would fill in their tracks. And the

flakes if you look at them, when it just normally snows, the flakes can be different,

like it could be little ones blowing, or whatever, but when you see it, you’ll know

what it is, they’re not that big, but, they’re bigger, and they’re kinda like, I don’t

know how to describe it, the flakes are almost like ah, bits of, I don’t know, toilet

tissue, if you want, but when they all come together, they cover, like it will cover

everything, like you know when there is big snowflakes like that, tracks and all this

stuff, right. But the story goes, it’s because of the rabbits, and for them, how to be

able to survive.

The end."