Word: hutch
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Elmer and Elsie are nocturnal. During the day, repelled by too-strong light, they hide in a cozy "hutch" against the wainscoting. When night comes, they venture out in search of the mild artificial light that they crave. Guided by their photoelectric eyes, they creep toward a lamp or the fireplace. When they hit an obstacle they stop, growl faintly, back away and try again at a slightly different angle. Their wanderings often take them all over the house. When they reach a light of the proper intensity, they bask under it blissfully in photoelectric euphoria...
...contentment does not last. As their batteries run down, Elmer and Elsie begin to feel uneasy. When hunger begins to dominate them, they lose interest in gentle light. Now they want strong light: the bright, glaring lamp that burns inside their hutch. They scuttle toward it eagerly. If all goes well, they pop into the hutch, where electrical contacts quiet their hunger by recharging their batteries. Not until their run-down stomachs are full do they creep out again in search of gentle light...
There have been tragedies, too. Sometimes Elmer and Elsie, delayed by an obstacle, have not reached their hutch in time. They have starved to death in sight of plentiful food. The good Dr. Walter, of course, brings them back from the dead by recharging their batteries...
...individual student who wants no part of them is left to his own devices. Almost never does a House activity or organization intrude on an individual's privacy. Never is a student compelled, by social pressure or otherwise, to do or die for he glory of the Bunny hutch...
...delicate and purely religious matter clear only by implication in the footnotes which are grouped, I think unfortunately, at the end of the book. The rhetorical implication is that Catholics, encouraged by the teachings of their "costumed" clerics, view Protestant and Jewish marriage as conjugal union in a rabbit hutch...