Events take place many years ago in one faraway African country. Boas tirelessly hunt rabbits, while monkeys and elephants are neutral. Despite the fact that rabbits usually run very fast, at the sight of boas they seem to fall into a daze. Boas do not strangle rabbits, but hypnotize them. Once a young boa constrictor wonders why rabbits are hypnotized and whether there were any attempts at rebellion. Then another boa constrictor, nicknamed Kosoya, although in fact he is one-eyed, decides to tell his young friend an “amazing story” about how a rabbit swallowed by him suddenly rebelled right in his stomach, did not want to “ram up” and “yelled "From his stomach all sorts of insolence. Then the head of the boas, the Great Python, ordered Kosoy to be dragged onto the Elephant Trail so that the elephants would “ram” the impudent rabbit, albeit at the cost of health and even the life of the “miserable” Kosy boa, because “the boa that the rabbit says is not the one that needed. " An unfortunate boa woke up only two weeks later and was already one-eyed, not remembering at what point the impudent rabbit had jumped out of it.

Oblique's tale is overheard by a rabbit whose name is Pondering, since he thinks a lot; as a result of long deliberation, this rabbit comes to a bold conclusion and reports shocked boas about it: “Your hypnosis is our fear. Our fear is your hypnosis. ” With this sensational news, Thoughtful hurries to other rabbits. Ordinary rabbits are delighted with the idea of ​​Pondering, but the King of rabbits does not like such freethinking, and he reminds rabbits that although “the fact that boas swallow rabbits is a terrible injustice”, but for this injustice the rabbits use “a small but charming injustice appropriating the most delicate foodstuffs grown by the natives ”: peas, cabbage, beans, and if one injustice is canceled, then the second must be canceled. Fearing the destructive power of everything new, as well as the loss of his own authority in the eyes of ordinary rabbits, the King urges rabbits to be content with what they have, as well as the eternal dream of growing delicious Cauliflower in the near future. The rabbits feel that "in the words of the Thoughtful one there is some seductive, but too disturbing truth, and in the words of the King some kind of boring, but comforting truth."

Although for ordinary rabbits, Pondering is still a hero, the King decides to secretly eliminate him and persuades a former friend of Pondering, who is now close to the court and favorite of the Queen by the name of Resourceful to betray a disgraced rabbit, for which it is necessary to read loudly in the jungle a verse composed by the court poet with “hints” »To the location of the Pensive. The resourceful agrees, and once, when Pondering and his student, named Thirsty, think about how to eliminate the injustice from the life of rabbits, a young boa crawls to them. Thinking, he decides to conduct an experiment to prove his theory about the absence of hypnosis, and the boa does not succumb to hypnosis. A frustrated boa tells the rabbits about the betrayal of the Resourceful, and Thinking, sincerely loving his own rabbits and deeply shocked by the King’s meanness and the very fact of betrayal, decides to sacrifice himself a boa, whose instinct is stronger than the arguments of reason, and a young boa, to the horror of the Craving, in addition to his own will eats the Great Rabbit. Thinking about death, he bequeaths his work to the faithful student, as if transferring to him "all his experience in studying boas."

Meanwhile, the young boa, emboldened after eating Pondered, concludes that the boas should be governed by the boa, and not some foreign Python there. For such an impudent thought, the boa is exiled to the desert. The Resourceful is also referred there for treason (the King disowned him). A hungry boa will soon come up with a new method of eating rabbits - through strangulation - and swallow the amazed Resourceful. The boa logically decides that with “such a brilliant discovery” the Great Python “will welcome him with open arms,” and returns from the desert.

Meanwhile, in the jungle the Thirsty is carrying out a huge educational work among the rabbits - he is even ready, as an experiment, to run through the body of the boa in both directions. In the era of the dying of hypnosis, complete chaos reigns: “the opening of the Thinking about hypnosis and even the promise of the Thirsty to run back and forth on a boa constrictor in many respects shook the relations between rabbits and boas formed over the centuries.” The result is "a huge number of anarchistically minded rabbits, weakly or completely not amenable to hypnosis." But the kingdom of rabbits does not fall apart precisely thanks to the return of the Boa Desert. He offers a method of strangling rabbits and demonstrates it on Diagon, so that he gives up his breath. After that, the Great Python forgives the Hermit and appoints him as his deputy. Soon, the Hermit informs the boas about the death of the Great Python and that, according to the will of the deceased, he, the Great Hermit, will rule them. While the boas are improving their strangulation techniques, glorifying the new ruler, the King of rabbits guesses and notifies the rabbits of the impending danger, offering an old, but the only method of combating boas - to multiply ahead.

Interestingly, both rabbits and boas regret the good old days. The Thirsty’s activity now, when boas are strangling everyone, has “less and less success”. Rabbits idealize the era of hypnosis, because then the dying man did not feel pain and did not resist, boas, because it was easier to catch rabbits, but both of them agree that there used to be order.

R. S. Later, the author was destined to be convinced of the scientific correctness of the thoughts of Pondering: one familiar snake-eater "with contemptuous confidence" informed him, "that there is no hypnosis, that these are all legends that have come down to us from primitive savages."