“They’ll be all right - and thousands like them. “You needn’t worry about them,” said his companion. It seemed to Hazel that he would not be needing his body any more, so he left it lying on the edge of the ditch, but stopped for a moment to watch the rabbits and to try to get used to the extraordinary feeling that strength and speed were flowing inexhaustibly out of him into their sleek young bodies and healthy senses. The sun was shining and in spite of the cold there were a few bucks and does at silflay, keeping out of the wind as they nibbled the shoots of spring grass. They went out past the young sentry, who paid the visitor no attention. We shall be glad to have you and you’ll enjoy it.

I’ve come to ask whether you’d care to join my Owsla. “You’ve been feeling tired,” said the stranger, “but I can do something about that. As the story concludes, he is visited in his burrow by the rabbit folk hero El-ahrairah, who offers to take Hazel with him to join his group of Owsla, the rabbits’ ruling caste: In the book’s final pages, Hazel, after spending the duration of the novel saving his beloved brother Fiver and establishing a new, safe warren where he and his friends can live in peace, has grown old. The book’s legions of fans can only hope that Adams’s death was as peaceful as the one he granted its hero, Hazel. It’s most celebrated for its immersive details: Adams’s rabbits never blur themselves into humans with fur and long ears, but are always recognizably rabbits, with specifically rabbit-like ideas about food and sex and land.

Watership Down is an epic tale of anthropomorphized rabbits that loosely follows the story of the founding of Rome. Richard Adams, author of the beloved children’s book Watership Down, passed away on Christmas Eve at the age of 96.

Watership down adams richard