Rachel Coleman

I thought this was really interesting, because from most of the book, it seemed the rabbits trusted each other, and if Bigwig had led them, it felt like things might have been much the same. But here we get some good example of what Bigwig doesn't handle well, and it's better that Hazel was in charge. And that he actually handles Bigwig well and tactfully.

It also reminds me of something I've commented about about other books, that this chapter is one that was scary when I first read it, but on re-reading doesn't have a big effect on me because it doesn't actually really affect the outcome. And I'm ok with that in Watership down, because I'm interested in all the chapters, but in other books it annoys me when there's too many chapters which are scary but end up not changing the situation much, because I read them addictively, and then get to the end and ask "wait, did anything actually happen"?

It also interested me that "lendri" is one of the very few Lapine words that I think we see used but are never explicitly given an English translation. Liv speculated that might be to make the Lendri more ominous, that if it said "badger" human readers might not have experience the same effect as describing how big and ominous it is.