The Foolish, Timid Rabbit
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The piece of literature is a silly, yet thought provoking tale of a rabbit who jumps (or rather hops) to conclusions extremely quickly, all based on the fears he holds prior. The rabbit has seemingly an existential crisis one day, and being in the timid state as implied, begins to think the world is ending simply by hearing a sound, which the readers know to be the sound of a falling coconut. Without investigating the sound, the rabbit does not know this, and believes the world is coming to an end.
This all leads to the rabbit's panic alerting other rabbits, which ultimately alerts deer, and so on and so forth with a multitude of other animals until the King Lion is notified of the commotion, who then quickly resolves the matter by asking the rabbit to take him to the location at which he heard the noise of the "world breaking up." After realizing it was simply a following coconut, the conflict is resolved and put to rest.
The moral of the story seems to be that it is very easily to be not only influenced by your own fears, but by others' as well. The rabbit was existentially sensitive at a sudden thought, and his surroundings subsequently prompted him into reacting in an unnecessary way. However, more importantly, the rabbit's own fears worried other animals in the kingdom who easily fell victim to such a silly fear just due to noticing another individual being worried.
I would retell this story possibly at a college campus and relate it possible to the spread of misinformation in relation to the academic setting the students are located in. It is important to note, as well, that until an authoritative figure in the story, the king lion, mentioned anything, the inferior animals were easily lead to fall into the fears of an even more inferior animal, the rabbit. This could be retold in a manner that shows that sometimes a false alarm is taken too far before it is resolved, and only specific, higher-up people can resolve it.
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