Tag Archives: Hares

A parliament of hares

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Has anyone seen the leaping hare                                                                                            Or of it did you hear?                                                                                                                 I was so lucky, I was there                                                                                                        When through the trees did peer                                                                                              To find out what had caught my eye                                                                                          As I drove past whilst on my way                                                                                              To Liverpool from Southport gay.                                                                                               Curious! But what? And why?

It was twenty years ago, at least; I was driving from my sister Doreen’s house in Southport to lodgings in New Brighton, and was on the outskirts of Thornton. You know how hard it is to stop the car mid journey. Remember the kids in the back, desperate to stop for the toilet, or something fascinating they’d seen? And would you stop? No. Not until threatened with instant urine or worse.

So I was well on my journey with no intention of stopping, when out of the corner of my eye, to the right of the road, I caught a glimpse. The most fleeting hundredths-of-a-second subliminal flicker of something ejecting from a field. What could it have been, I considered as I drove past.

A great effort of will stopped the car a mile past. If I don’t go back and look I’ll never know, and for the rest of my life I’ll wonder what it was that I saw. Or might have seen. So I did a Uee and parked by the field.

There was a sandstone wall a yard high with a typical triangular top, beyond which was a small field of say two or three acres: a meadow of overgrown grass bordered by a hawthorn hedge. Houses were nearby, and the traffic pottered past. Nothing to see, but I waited.

Then, Yes! Again, from a different part of the field, a leap! A leap from the covering grass! Into the air the height of a man, a hare! Up, then down and hidden. Then another! From a cricket-pitch away! A wide circle of hares, unseen on the ground, but briefly visible as they took random turns to become skybourne.

Somewhere in that ancient ritual were doe-hares in the centre of the circle; the males (I guessed twenty or so) mysteriously displaying their energy and power. But could the does see anything in the long grass? Who knows what does know, ha, a mystery!

A Parliament of Hares; a once-in-a-lifetime sight that I never thought to witness, and half considered to be a myth. So glad I turned back. I stayed for half an hour as the traffic noise and fume staged an incongruous background to a fabulous, mythical natural event, right there in front of me. And no-one else stopped to look! I felt strangely honoured to have been present at an animal-ceremony that so few have seen, and rather shocked that the hares were there in numbers, performing their ritual virtually right in the suburbs.

The hare is a peculiar, homeless creature, of solitary mysterious ways. How it survives in our unwelcoming environment, and even today stages its parliament despite the confines of urban sprawl, is a wonderful thing. Perennially persecuted, it persists.

The Fourth Dead Hare

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LAST NIGHT SAW THE DEATH AND DEVOURING OF THE FOURTH HARE, within a few metres of the previous three. This morning, in the heat, very small stinking remains covered in frantic flies. Flies and smell led me to the site instantly, just metres from the back door.

This within two years.

Ok, so this is a neighbourhood of dogs, none of which, however, I have ever seen on the loose, especially at night. Never seen a stray dog wandering, or a fox or dingo. Or a big goanna.

So questions: Why four deaths in one small area, over less than two years? Why near the house and next to parked cars? Were the hares brought there, or killed there? In each case the hares were mostly eaten in situ. Once only the feet and stomach remained. All bones were usually eaten. Once there were two hares’ remains next to eachother, suggesting that the site was, is chosen for devouring, not necessarily for killing.

Surely wild dog or dingo…….but how could either one avoid detection for so long, when it is obviously a regular visitor. Headlights have never picked one out; never a glimpse. No scats have been found on roadside or garden. (Obvious, full of claws and fur.)

I regularly see wild dogs and dingos, snakes and goannas, at my place in the ‘bush’; night and day: they are not so secretive as to permanently avoid detection.

A local pet, perhaps, wandering at night whilst its owner sleeps. This seems the most obvious culprit, and I can think of one. But wouldn’t it take the kills home to eat? And why choose this place for all kills? Bone-crunching is a noisy business; why haven’t I heard it? Last night, within ten metres of where I was sleeping, a big hare was eaten, bones, head and all, and |I heard nothing.

A camera would have to be set up and maintained for a year or more to catch the culprit. If the camera pointed in the right direction.

And why hares, only? Why not snakes, or bush-turkeys, or the dozens of tiny local yappers? These last are out loose night and day, most the size of a hare. A dingo wouldn’t hesitate, though yappers are mostly noise and fluff. There are plenty of yappers we could spare, gladly. Or wild ducks, which always are wandering about? (Though that would be a shame.)

I like the hares. They do eat stuff we plant for ourselves, but not much. They are mad, and entertaining, and picturesque. They are homeless from birth, and have no den, burrow, or nest. Their survival in Australia is miraculous. They cause little damage or harm, and offer much entertainment. They can out-run a greyhound in an open paddock. (Not on a confined track: no room for jinking.) There are never many of them about, unlike rabbits.

Help me find the hare-killer. How can it be done?