Hop, hop, hop! A little bunny named Floppy, with fur as soft as dandelion fluff, merrily chased a brightly colored butterfly. Blue-wing fluttered from flower to flower, and Floppy hopped after him across the green meadow that stretched through a wide valley. The sun shone warmly, and the air smelled of wild thyme and wild strawberries.
"Wait for me!" Floppy called out breathlessly as the butterfly escaped him again and landed on a tall bluebell. And that's when it happened.
From the other side of the valley, from the large gray rocks, a voice called back to him: "Wait for me!"
Floppy stopped in surprise. His ears shot up, and he looked around curiously. "Who's there?" he asked aloud.
And from the distance, the reply came back: "Who's there?"
The little bunny frowned. Someone was making fun of him. And they were repeating everything he said! He did not like that one bit. He decided to uncover this mocker.
"That's not funny!" he shouted toward the rocks.
And the answer? "That's not funny!"
"Just you wait, I'll get you!" Floppy threatened and ran across the meadow. Along the way, he leaped over tufts of soft grass and little streams that gurgled merrily. All the while, he muttered to himself: "Who could it be? Roxy the Fox is too clever for such games. And Grumble the Bear has a voice as deep as a bumblebee. This voice sounds exactly like mine!"
When he ran closer to the rocks, he stopped and hid behind a large rosehip bush. He waited quietly for a moment. Nothing happened. All was quiet, only the wind rustled gently in the leaves.
"Aha! He must be afraid of me," Floppy thought and gathered his courage. He decided to try a trick. What if he said something very, very quietly? Would the stranger hear him then?
He leaned forward and whispered: "Hello, are you there?"
He had barely finished speaking when a soft whisper returned from the rocks: "Hello, are you there?"
Floppy jumped in surprise. The mysterious voice had heard his whisper too! This was getting very strange. He decided on another attempt. He would invent a word that nobody knew. Surely it couldn't repeat that! He thought for a moment and then, at the top of his lungs, shouted the strangest word he could think of: "Fuzzwuzzle!"
And from the valley, an almost immediate, cheerful reply came back: "Fuzzwuzzle!"
That was too much! Floppy got angry. He ran out from behind the bush and stamped his paws on the ground. "Come out right now! I see you! Stop copying me!" he yelled, his ears trembling.
And guess what he heard back? "Stop copying me!"
Floppy sat down helplessly on a moss-covered stone. What was he to do? No other bunny, no fox, no bird. Nobody anywhere. Just him and that mysterious, mocking voice.
Suddenly, the stone he was sitting on moved slightly. Floppy nearly jumped out of his fur in fright. But it wasn't a stone. It was the ancient Old Gray Rock, who had stood there for hundreds of years and had seen everything that happened in the valley. Her face was weathered by wind and rain, and her voice sounded like the slow tumbling of pebbles.
"Why are you shouting so, little bunny?" asked Old Gray Rock calmly.
Floppy stared at her with his big round eyes. A talking rock! Today was a very strange day indeed. "Someone is mocking me!" he complained. "He repeats everything I say, and I don't know where he's hiding."
The rock smiled wisely, though it looked more like a new crack appearing on her surface. "No one is mocking you, Floppy. It is only your own voice at play."
The little bunny tilted his head in confusion. "My voice? But how? I am here, and it is over there!" and he pointed with his paw to the opposite side of the valley.
"I will tell you a secret," the rock whispered. "Do you ever play with a ball?"
"Of course!" replied Floppy. "I have a small, red one. I like to throw it against the wall of our burrow."
"And what happens when you throw it against the wall?" the rock continued.
"Why, it bounces off and comes right back to my paws!" Floppy blurted out proudly, as if he had just solved a great mystery.
"Exactly," Old Gray Rock nodded. "And your voice does the very same thing. Imagine that your voice isn't just a sound. It's like a bunch of tiny, invisible balls that fly out of your mouth when you say something."
Floppy imagined it. Little, transparent balls flying through the air.
"These little sound-balls fly across the whole valley," the rock continued. "When they hit me or my stone brothers on the other side, they have nowhere else to go. So they simply bounce back—just like your red ball from the wall—and fly back to where they came from. To you."
The little bunny sat with his mouth wide open. So it wasn't a mocker! It was his own voice, returned from its trip!
"And what you hear, that returned voice, is called an echo," finished Old Gray Rock. "It is like a message from the rocks, letting you know that your voice reached them safely and is now returning home."
Floppy's eyes lit up. "An echo!" he repeated the new word. Then he turned to the rocks and, with a smile, shouted: "Hello, echo!"
And from the distance, a friendly reply came back: "Hello, echo!"
He wasn't angry anymore. Quite the opposite! He was thrilled. He had found a new friend. He began to play with her. He tried shouting fast, then slow. He tried high notes and then low ones. The echo faithfully repeated everything. It was the best game in the world! He counted how long it took for the word to return to him and found that from up close it was immediate, but when he shouted to the faraway rocks, he had to wait a little moment.
As the sun slowly began to set toward the horizon and bathed the meadow in a golden light, Floppy said goodbye to Old Gray Rock. "Thank you for explaining! Now I know that the echo is my friend."
Then, one last time, he called into the valley: "Good night!"
And the echo whispered back to him: "Good night!"
With a smile on his face, Floppy headed home. He couldn't wait to tell all his friends about his new discovery. What would it be like if they all shouted in the valley at once?
What do you think, children? Will the other animals go and try out how an echo works? And what if you tried it too on your next walk in nature or in a big empty room? With your parents' help, of course! Clap your hands and listen to see if the sound comes back to you.