I think that the first verse of the poem means, how does a little kid keep so innocent in such a rough world. Also I think she follows that rabbit cause she was bored and she has never seen a rabbit that could talk and carry a watch in it little pocket. In the story I think that the words are shaped like a tail to symboliz a mouses tail for the sentance before stating that she is going to explain what the mouses tali looks like. The diffrence between a caucus race is there is no start and no finish and there is no winner. In a normal race there is a winner and you have a start and a finish line.