Bog Myrtle & Peat

It’s been a cracking winter with the ferrets. My records now tell me that they have put just over seventy rabbits in my hands, and have contributed to the downfall of a score of others who were too inaccessible to find. Both have come on leaps and bounds in terms of their ability to deal with bunnies who are often more than twice as heavy as they are, and judging by the quantity of blood spilt, they are becoming more and more efficient at their work.

Walking along an old dykeback this afternoon in an effort to get out of the brisk easterly wind, I spotted a small mound of soil amongst the foundation stones. Looking closely, I saw that it was the tiny entrance to a small warren in the wall (which in itself sounds like it could be a town in Northumberland; Small Warren-in-the-Wall). Dashing back to the house, I returned ten minutes later with a ferret in my pocket and a couple of nets in my hand.

The hole seemed to run into the foundations of the dyke, and it emerged six feet further up on the other side. I wasted no time in pegging the purse nets in, then unleashed the ferret, who had cottoned on to what I was doing and had started attacking the inside of my jacket. In order to keep an eye on both sides of the dyke, I sat on top of it as though it were a horse, with legs dangling on either side. I was prepared to dive down at a moment’s notice and seize whatever emerged with tremendous relish. Like so many of my ferreting endeavours, it was not to be.

The rabbit’s tunnel was so small that I must have been within inches of it when I was setting the nets, and given that it simply ran between the stones, it must have been watching me through the cracks. As a result, it was determined not to bolt. I listened in happily as the onslaught began beneath me, and pebbles rained out of the dry stone wall on either side. I was concerned to hear a major crunch, then to see some larger stones fall. In one fluid movement, part of the dyke fell outwards, revealing my ferret clinging doggedly onto the shoulder of a rabbit. The bunny was not at all impressed, and was trying to force itself through a tiny hole infront of it, belaboured all the while by its tiny and malignant assailant. I had to take off my jacket and reach into the lichen-covered maze to haul it out, and once it had been gutted, I was in for a sad revelation.

The ferret was happily perusing the rabbit’s liver when I noticed that the rabbit had been pregnant. Perhaps the pregnancy had set in for a week or ten days, but there were already noticeable lumps in her nether regions. It is usually customary to stop ferreting when there are young around, and although this doe was clearly an early starter, it looks like my ferrets and I are approaching the end of the 2010/2011 season.