Bog Myrtle & Peat

Ever since I started ferreting, I have been wondering what else my ferrets would be able to bolt besides rabbits. I have read stories of little owls, rats and fox cubs coming charging out from the safety of a rabbit hole when they feel threatened, but always took most of these tales with a pinch of salt. Of course, it makes sense that other animals would use rabbit warrens, and an old warren must be made up of many feet of tunnel that are no longer being used by the original architects.

Fox cubs are distributed across rabbit warrens during the summer, but since ferreting is essentially a winter sport, it is hard to imagine a ferret coming across an adult fox which has squeezed its way into a warren and not left any indication that it was in there, either through a larger spoil heap or the distinctive smell. On the whole, I was hoping that my ferrets might bolt unexpected animals from rabbit warrens, but I didn’t exactly expect it to happen as a matter of routine.

The long-net was in use on Saturday when it was put to work around a large stack of old tyres. Sadly, the ground was too stony to get many of the vertical pegs in very firmly, so when the ferrets bolted the first rabbit into the mesh, the rabbit hauled all 24 yards of net over a track and into a nettle patch, where it promptly escaped. Undaunted, a team of friends unravelled the inevitable tangle of threads, and ten minutes later, we had caught and despatched two healthy adult bunnies, neither of whom appeared to be able to see the net. They made no attempt to avoid it, and their momentum just faded away as the baggy net bottom gathered them up inside and brought them to a halt, hopelessly tangled.

In the last half hour of light, we erected the long-net around a large warren at the base of an old blackthorn tree. The ferret went in, but the wind was picking up and it would have been almost impossible to hear if he was working effectively. Suddenly, a weasel burst from a hole directly opposite me and tumbled like a dead leaf under the long-net and away into another nettle patch.

So there it is – I am now convinced that carnivores share warrens with rabbits, although the weasel has to be one of the smallest predators in Britain and would probably struggle to do much damage to its landlords…