The award-winning writer David Sedaris has given Aesop's Fables a modern twist in his latest book, Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk. Here, we publish two exclusive extracts featuring Rabbit, a psychopathic security guard, and a judgmental hairdresserTo hear David reading from the book, click here

The Vigilant Rabbit

A white-tailed doe was discovered one morning disembowelled on the banks of the stream, and the residents of the forest went crazy with fear – "freaked out" was how the sparrow put it. A few days later a skunk was found, no more than a gnawed-upon skull attached to a short leash of spine. Personality-wise, he'd been no great shakes. Neither was he particularly good-looking, but still! Then a squirrel disappeared, and it was decided that something had to be done. A meeting was convened in the clearing near the big oak, and the hawk, who often flew great distances in search of food, proposed that they build a gate. "I've seen one where the humans live, and it seems to work fairly well."

"Work how?" asked a muskrat.

The hawk explained that once the gate was erected, anyone entering the forest would have to stop and identify himself. "It keeps out the riffraff," he said, adding that when bad things happened, that was usually who was responsible – riffraff.

For the second time that day, the muskrat raised his hand. "And what if this riffraff can't be stopped?"

"Then you sound an alarm," the hawk suggested. "It could be anything, really, just so long as it's loud."

The building of the gate was left to the beaver, who had a slight problem with the hinges, but eventually got them right. Just to the side of them he hung a gong fashioned from an old NO TRESPASSING sign. "I figured I could hit it with my tail," he said, and he gave it a whack for good measure.

When the noise had stopped echoing off the surrounding hills, the rabbit stepped forward. "Who elected you to man the gate?" he asked, adding that anyone could hit a sheet of rusted metal, even someone without an oversize tail. At that he picked up a heavy stick and went at it, creating a racket as loud as the beaver's. "I've also got the better hearing," he boasted. "I'm slimmer, I'm faster, and I'm more safety conscious, vigilant, you might say."

All eyes turned to the beaver, who said simply, "Whatever," and waddled back to his lodge.

On the rabbit's first morning as chief of security, he stopped an approaching snake, who looked up at him and laughed until he cried.

"Something funny?" asked the rabbit.

The snake used his tail to wipe a tear from his face. "You idiots," he said. "What good is a gate without a wall?"

"What good is a… huh?"

"It doesn't make any sense," continued the snake. "If an animal doesn't want to enter here, what's to stop him from moving down a few dozen yards and crawling in beside the fallen pine?"

"What's to stop him?" asked the rabbit, and he picked up his heavy stick and bashed the snake's head in. Then he kicked some dirt over the body and wrote NO LAUGHING on the NO TRESPASSING sign.

A short while later a magpie stopped by and pecked at the bits of brain left scattered on the ground in front of the gate. "Not to nitpick," he said between mouthfuls, "but what's to prevent someone from entering by air? You and your friends initiate a no-fly zone?"

"What's to keep you from flying in?" asked the rabbit, and once again he brought down his heavy stick. Then he dug up the snake and hung both it and the dead magpie from the top of his gate. There they could act as visual warnings, proof that he was a force to be reckoned with. When that was done, he added to his sign, which now read: NO TRESPASSING. NO LAUGHING. AND NO STUPID QUESTIONS EITHER. THIS MEANS YOU.

It was a hot, windless day, and within an hour blowflies arrived and settled on the faces of the two dead animals. Their buzzing attracted a frog, who jumped over from the nearby stream, flicked out his tongue, and dined upon them until he was full. Only then did he read the sign and turn to address the rabbit. "Seeing as you don't want jokes or questions, I guess I'll phrase this as a comment," he said. "In order to enter through your gate I'll have to stop and go through your tiresome rigmarole. That kind of BS doesn't interest me much, so instead I'm going to return to my stream and swim into your third-rate, beetle-infested forest."

He turned to leave, and the rabbit, who was nothing if not quick, reached for his heavy stick. Then he hung the frog on his gate and added NO CURSING to his NO TRESPASSING sign.

It wasn't long before an otter came along and went for the crushed frog. Then a badger stopped by, attracted by the smell of the dead otter. As the bodies were heaped upon the gate, it began to tilt. The rabbit propped it up with a fallen branch and then turned his attention to the sign. NO DIRTY LOOKS, HE WROTE. NO QUESTIONING MY INTEGRITY. NO INSULTING REMARKS ABOUT MY EARS OR MY TEETH. He was just wondering how to spell "insolence" when a shadow fell, and he looked up to see a mag-nificent white unicorn. His silky mane curled about his neck in waves the colour of buttercups. Equally brilliant was his horn, which looked to be made of gold. At his approach, the rabbit put down his pencil. "State your name and your business."

"I'm a unicorn," said the unicorn, "and I come to bring joy to all the forest creatures."

"Not with that horn you don't," said the rabbit.

"I beg your pardon?"

"I said, lose the weapon."

"The horn is what makes me who I am!"

"Which is unwelcome," said the rabbit. "Now do as I say or beat it."

"But happiness follows wherever I go!" the unicorn protested. "I can make a rainbow just by flicking my tail."

The rabbit reached for his stick.

"If you won't let me through the gate, I'll just jump over it," said the unicorn. And because he was taller than the rabbit and much more powerful, he did just that. "Sorry," he said as he headed into the forest, "but you didn't leave me any choice."

"We'll see about that," muttered the rabbit, and he spat on to the blood-soaked ground.

The unicorn spent the late afternoon making rainbows for all the woodland creatures. Then he caused the wildflowers to bloom and conjured up some berries for a hungry box turtle. As the sun set over the treetops, he settled upon a bed of fragrant moss and fell into a deep sleep.

The following morning, the songbirds woke him. The unicorn yawned and was just about to stand when he noticed the pile of golden shavings scattered across the moss. Then he felt his forehead and galloped to the gate piled high with rotting carcasses. "Who chewed off my horn? he wailed.

The rabbit answered calmly that rules were rules. "If I let you trot around with a weapon on your head, I'd have to let everyone do it."

"But it had magic powers!"

"I said, scram," said the rabbit.

The unicorn, just a common everyday horse now, slunk off toward a field of tall grasses. The rabbit watched him go and then turned back to his sign. "Magic powers indeed," he muttered. "I didn't taste anything special." Again he spat, only this time a diamond came out and landed on the ground beside him. That's what he was staring at when the wolves arrived.

The Cat and the Baboon

The cat had a party to attend, and went to the baboon to get herself groomed.

"What kind of party?" the baboon asked, and she massaged the cat's neck in order to relax her, the way she did with all her customers. "Hope it's not that harvest dance down on the riverbank. My sister went last year and said she'd never seen such rowdiness. Said a fight broke out between two possums, and one gal, the wife of one or the other, got pushed on to a stump and knocked out four teeth. And they were pretty ones, too, none of this yellowness you find on most things that eat trash."

The cat shuddered. "No," she said. "This is just a little get-together, a few friends. That type of thing."

"Will there be food?" the baboon asked.

"Something," the cat sighed. "I just don't know what."

"'Course it's hard," the baboon said. "Everybody eating different things. You got one who likes leaves and another who can't stand the sight of them. Folks have gotten so picky nowadays, I just lay out some peanuts and figure they either eat them or they don't."

"Now, I wouldn't like a peanut," the cat said.

"Not at all."

"Well, I guess you'd just have drinks, then. The trick is knowing when to stop."

"That's never been a problem for me," the cat boasted. "I drink until I'm full, and then I push myself away from the table. Always have."

"Well, you've got sense, then. Not like some of them around here." The baboon picked a flea from the cat's head and stuck it gingerly between her teeth. "Take this wedding I went to – last Saturday, I think it was. Couple of marsh rabbits got married – you probably heard about it."

The cat nodded.

"Now, I like a church service, but this was one of those write-your-own-vows sorts of things. Neither of them had ever picked up a pen in their life, but all of a sudden they're poets, right, like that's all it takes – being in love."

"My husband and I wrote our own vows," the cat said defensively.

"Sure you did," countered the baboon, "but you probably had something to say, not like these marsh rabbits, carrying on that their love was like a tender sapling or some damn thing. And all the while they had this squirrel off to the side, plucking at a harp, I think it was."

"I had a harp player at my wedding," the cat said, "and it was lovely."

"I bet it was, but you probably hired a professional, someone who could really play. This squirrel, I don't think she'd taken a lesson in her life. Just clawed at those strings, almost like she was mad at them."

"Well, I'm sure she tried her best," the cat said.

The baboon nodded and smiled, the way one must in the service industry. She'd planned to tell a story about a drunken marsh rabbit, the brother of the groom at last week's wedding, but there was no point in it now, not with this client anyway. Whatever she said, the cat disagreed with, and unless she found a patch of common ground she was sure to lose her tip. "You know," she said, cleaning a scab off the cat's neck, "I hate dogs. Simply cannot stand them."

"What makes you bring that up?" the cat asked.

"Just thinking," the baboon said. "Some kind of spaniel mix walked in yesterday, asking for a shampoo, and I sent him packing, said, 'I don't care how much money you have, I'm not making conversation with anyone who licks his own ass.' " And the moment she said it, she realized her mistake.

"Now, what's wrong with that?" the cat protested. "It's good to have a clean anus. Why, I lick mine at least five times a day."

"And I admire you for it," the baboon said, "but you're not a dog."

"Meaning?"

"On a cat it's... classy," the baboon said. "There's a grace to it, but a dog, you know the way they hunker over, legs going every which way."

"Well, yes," the cat said. "I suppose you have a point."

"Then they slobber and drool all over everything, and what they don't get wet, they chew to pieces."

"That they do." The cat chuckled, and the baboon relaxed and searched her memory for a slanderous dog story. The collie, the German shepherd, the spaniel mix she claimed to have turned away: they were all good friends of hers, and faithful clients, but what would it hurt to pretend otherwise and cross that fine line between licking ass and simply kissing it?

Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk by David Sedaris is published by Little Brown at £12.99. To order a copy for £9.99 with free UK p&p, go to guardianbookshop.co.uk.

To hear David reading from the book, click here