Rodents and Rabbits

Here are a couple of exam narrations based on the Burgess Animal Book, told by Cornflower:

What is a rodent?

Rodents can be squirrels, rats, mice, porcupines, um, they can be beavers.

Talk about the characteristics of rodents.

Well, porcupines are brown, and most squirrels are brown, too. And one of the rats that we’ve read of looks like Templeton from Charlotte’s Web. He has red eyes, a skin tail, and he’s gray. And another rodent is Robber, another mouse. I think it’s a rat. And Robber is a handsome fellow, but, well—there’s Trader too, and he likes trading a lot.

What do you know about the Rabbit Family?

Rabbits belong to the order Lagomorpha, and the Marsh Rabbit likes to swim. He likes water. Most rabbits don’t. There’s Peter Rabbit, very popular, and his cousin… I forget what his cousin’s name is. The Lagomorpha family all like carrots. They all like vegetation…. Vegetables. They have very big fur coats, and they are very cute and fuzzy. One of the rabbits, the arctic rabbit, likes the cold, and, as I said, the marsh rabbit likes swimming in marshes. Peter Rabbit doesn’t like water. And they are mammals. They don’t lay eggs.