wild life (2)

And then there was the day Reynard came calling. As I stepped around the corner of the House on some errand, there he was, sniffing the ground. I stopped with a start, unsure of how to react, tentatively calling “Bonjour, Maitre Renard”, not wanting him to run. He didn’t seem scared, but didn’t seem keen to stay either; just sauntered off at his own elegant pace, cool as a cucumber, brush straight up in the air, giving me a last look over his shoulder as he slipped under the fence: “Some other time, perhaps”.

But I never saw him again, though he would be welcome, to cull the hordes of rabbits growing plump on my lantanas and geraniums (lantanae? gerania?) – and even on the barks of the fruit trees, the fucking little bastards.

wild life

“Feather-footed through the plashy fen passes the questing vole”. It would take a much braver man than the Fool to even try to emulate the inimitable William Boot, nature writer and war correspondent extraordinaire. So I won't. Just some occasional notes about the creatures on the Hill.

The overwhelming impression is of rabbits, rabbits everywhere. Come to think of it, Coney Island might not be a bad solution in our quest to find a name (though it's wise to check with the American wag first, for undesirable connotations). The first weekend we spent at the House, one even fell into the underground patio (a sunken patio, the top of its walls flush with the ground – where clothes can be hung to dry in the open air but out of sight of guests. Clever, eh?). It had been a dark and stormy night (reader, clichés were promised from the beginning), and he was a fluffy little fellow, wet through and in shock at the ten-foot fall. The Fool picked him up with a towel and rubbed him, like Roger with the puppy in The 101 Dalmatians, and then set him down outside (fully prepared to take him out of his misery, if he proved to be too far gone – though I didn’t tell the Princess that). He sat there for a moment, then his ears shot up like exclamation marks and he bolted up the hill, stopped again, lifted his ears once more to get his bearings, then off again and into the undergrowth, to warn his mates about large holes in the ground.



There’s a pair of nesting buzzards, on the slope in front. One sees them often, soaring lazily over the mountain, and even more often just hears their call when they are lost to sight against the trees in the background. Once, I was trying my father’s old duck-decoys in the pool when a shadow suddenly loomed. I looked up, and there was one of the pair, hovering, checking the lie of the land, ready for the stoop. But it saw me and must have felt discretion was the better part of valour (I flatter myself thinking), and it flew off.

And there’s a grey heron, crossing the horizon eastwards in the morning and westwards in the evening, regular as clockwork. And flights of mallard in V-formation, like F-16s. And more.

I mean to put up some sort of a bird-feeding table, though the trees still need to grow quite a bit before they are of a proper size to attract songbirds.