Chukfi Rabbit's Big, Bad Bellyache

Deep in Choctaw country, trickster Chukfi Rabbit is always figuring out some way to avoid work at all costs.

The way the Choctaws tell it, Chukfi Rabbit is the laziest -- and hungriest -- trickster rabbit there is. When Bear, Turtle, Fox, and Beaver agree on an everybody-work-together day to build Ms. Possum a new house, Chukfi Rabbit says he's too busy to help -- until he hears there will be a big feast after the work is done: cornbread biscuits, grape dumplings, tanchi labona (a Choctaw kind of corn stew), and best of all, lots of fresh, homemade butter! While everyone else helps build the house, Chukfi helps himself to all that yummy butter. What a furry fiend! Greedy Chukfi soon learns that being lazy and disappointing your friends leads to one really, really big, bad bellyache! A classic trickster tale in the Choctaw tradition.