A long time ago, there lived a mother hare and its son. For many months, there was no rain and so all the animals decided to get food from human beings at night. Many animals starved to death while others barely survived.

The mother hare was a hard worker. She could spend long hours in the fields, toiling to get food for her son who had a reputation with other animals of being lazy and spoilt. There was never a time when mother hare reprimanded her son and always left him to do as he pleased.

When other animals complained about the behaviour of this hare, the mother could always jump to his defence, saying that all the allegations against him were wrong. At times this spoilt hare was found red handed doing wrong things like stealing but the mother would come to his defence and say he was set up by bad friends.

Other animals were angry at the mother hare because of defending the son who was not liked by many of them. But they could not find anything wrong with her because she was always generous with other animals, giving food and other things when she had plenty.

The drought was biting and the mother hare was getting sickly. She did not have the strength to work in the fields any more and it was obvious that she needed help from her son.

One morning, dark clouds started to appear in the horizon and all the animals were very excited about the prospects of having rains back. But as many of them knew, it was going too take quite sometime before the rains start to pour.

The signs of the clouds meant that they had to go out and get their farms ready for the planting season. Some went for their equipment and started to till the fields. They knew that it will take some time but the good days were already in sight.

The mother hare was quite weak and could not go to the garden. She asked her son to go out to the fields and till so that they too could have food when harvesting season came. Every morning, the son left the home and went out to the fields and late in the evening he could come back with soiled feet and the mother could always know that he had been to work.

The son knew that his mother was too weak and so could not go to check the amount of work he was doing in the garden. This trend continued for weeks as other animals prepared for the planting season.

And on each day, the mother could prepare food and give it to the son for lunch. Sometimes the son did not come home until after sun set and the mother was so impressed that she always sang praises of her son to other mothers.

When it was time to plant, she could take the seeds and give them to her son to work. The truth of the matter was than the son was not going to the garden and he was actually not working in the garden.

He could sit idly in the forest and when time to go home came, he could smear soil on his feet to show his mother that he had been working hard. This time round when the mother gave him seeds, the peanuts that were known in the forest as groundnuts, the hare could go and sit in the forest and after he had finished eating his lunch, he could eat the seeds as well.

Finally, every body finished planting and rains started to pour. The rains went on for a whole week and soon after, it was time for the animals to go \out and check their fields which had seeds germinating all over the place.

The mother hare called her son and packed food for him and told him to go out and check whether the fields were germinating. He took his food and went to the forest and like he had done before, the hare sat out there, basking in the sunshine and then in the evening after sunset, he went home and gave a very good report to his mother.

Each time he went out to weed the field, he could come back with a very impressive story and the mother was very happy. Then came the harvesting time and now he had to think quickly what to do because there was actually nothing to harvest in the field.

He thought out a plan and decided to go out and steal from other animals' fields and then take the food to his mother. And before he realised it, there was an outcry in the village about this thief and all the animals decided to do something about it.

They decided to take turns guarding their gardens and even one of the animals suspected that it was this hare that was stealing their food because his mother's garden was a bush and nothing had been done there.

But when it was suggested to the mother that her son was the one stealing people's food, she became very angry and chased the animals away. But the animals promised her that if her son was the thief, then he could be lynched if found red handed. It did not take long before he was caught.

There was an argument between the animals whether they should lynch him or take him to the elders. They decided against taking the law into their own hands and took him to the elders who punished him very severely and the mother was so ashamed for having defended him when he was actually the thief.

After the punishment, the hare decided that it was much better to live a straight life but this decision was taken after suffering a very harsh punishment