The Smell Of Rain

Written for Muse on Monday where David
asks us to write a story where an animal
is a key character. Here’s my take,
a gift for Colette’s 6^th birthday.

Winifred had known the storm was coming since morning. She’d felt it in the way the air pressed down on her fur, thick and electric, while the others in the warren were still asleep. Being a rabbit meant living in your body completely …. no part of you ever wandered off into thought without the rest of you following.

She sat at the entrance to the burrow and watched the sky go from pink to purple and gray.

“You’ll get wet,” said Bushwick, appearing beside her. He was an old hare …. not a rabbit at all …. but he’d lived near the warren so long that the distinction had blurred. His ears were enormous and slightly ragged at the tips, like torn paper.

“I like the smell before it rains,” Winifred said.

“You like a lot of things that are going to get you killed one day.”

This was probably true. Last autumn she had followed a beetle for nearly twenty minutes across open ground because its shell had caught the light in an interesting way. She’d heard the hawk before she’d seen it, which was the only reason she was still here to discuss it.

The first drops came in slow and fat, hitting the dust and releasing that smell …. that deep green-and-earth smell that seemed to come from somewhere below the ground rather than above it. Winifred closed her eyes. Her nose was doing something that no other part of her could do …. building a picture of the whole world from nothing but air.

“What do you smell?” Bushwick asked. He always asked. He claimed hares had inferior noses, which Winifred suspected was true.

“The creek is coming up,” she said. “Fox passed through the south field a few hours ago, heading west. And something’s dead near the old elm …. been there about two days.” She paused. “And the rain. Mostly just the rain.”

Bushwick nodded slowly. The downpour began in earnest, drumming on the leaves above them, and he backed further under the overhang. Winifred stayed where she was, letting the cold water flatten her fur against her back.

She was not thinking about the hawk or the fox or the thing by the elm. She was not thinking about anything. She was just a small animal in a large rain, twitching her nose at the world, and for the moment that was more than enough.

NAR©2026

This is “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head” by B.J. Thomas

Muse on Monday – February 23, 2026

Everything on The Elephant’s Trunk was created by me, unless otherwise indicated. Thanks for your consideration. NAR©2017-present.