Once the rabbits had devoured the vegetation, nests began to be emptied of their eggs, a delicacy they seemed particularly fond of. On more than one occasion he witnessed them fight for the right to nibble the fine bluish shells. They didn’t, however, argue over the chicks, and it was clear to the non-inventor that eating the warm flesh was something the rabbits did from necessity, reluctantly, as though their little minds rejected that cruelty. Their attitude, he thought, was in accord with the humanity they represented: his, their owner’s, humanity. This is perhaps why he was surprised that, once their initial scruples were overcome, they didn’t even leave the bones, as any person would have. They attacked the birds’ throats with their sharp incisors, and a rim of blood the same color as their eyes would stain their wriggling noses and fine whiskers. Once they had eaten the meager flesh they would gnaw the skeleton clean; the sound was like the snapping of dry branches. They even ate the beak. Then they groomed themselves until their fur was white once again.

While the feast was in progress, the birds would fly overhead emitting anguished squawks. They hung around the scene of the crime for hours, as if their offspring might reappear from behind a stone. The non-inventor found it curious that they never thought to attack the rabbits. It would have been easy for them to peck out their eyes with their sharp beaks, but that sort of group behavior didn’t seem to be instinctive to them.

It didn’t enter into his calculations that the rabbits now being born on the island would only ever eat flesh and eggs, or that such an unnatural situation would have dire consequences. For a time, either from laziness or stupidity, the birds continued breeding on the island, but as the nests started to vanish the non-inventor realized that the litters of baby rabbits did too. One morning he witnessed the reason for this: they were being eaten by members of their own species. He found the spectacle horrific and renounced the idea that these animals were an extension of himself. In fact, he thought of them as pests, just like the birds, and if he continued going to visit them, it was simply because he felt guilty about abandoning creatures that he himself had debased.

One day he tried giving them rabbit food. They just sniffed it before returning to their somewhat gruesome sexual encounters. They had learned to reproduce in order to eat and, as a result, the frequency of mating had increased. The non-inventor realized that necessity had shortened the length of gestation. Everyone ate whenever a female produced young; while the silent birth was taking place, the rabbits observed the mother as if they were also considering eating her. And since the rabbits no longer showed any interest in the nests, the birds returned to breed.