I used to take walks in the fields at the back of the shop most evenings, before I found the delights of the two G's Guinness & Girls. I wouldn't walk further that the house to the car now, So Laxie has no hope of getting me up a fecking mountain.
Whilst on one of these aimless walks I was treated to a lesson in Mother Nature's survival of the fittest.
As I walked alongside the ditch with the sun beginning to lose its power on a beautiful summer's evening, a rabbit broke out from the ditch near my feet. It was a young rabbit and its gait was broken, not the usual skip of a carefree rabbit. I was no threat to it, so it wasn't me making this creature run, terrified to the point of death.
It broke past me across the wide open field and I heard it, quite literally, cry in a heart tugging way I had never heard before, as it ran across the field, aimlessly, not in any given direction towards any kind of freedom.
Then I saw the object of its terror, it was what I had always called a weasel, but was probably a stoat. It came from further away, out of the same ditch. It seemed to be in no hurry at all, as this deadly little predator closed in on its quarry. Now I knew that the small rabbit was already dead when it passed me by.
Rooted to the spot I saw that streak of ferocity close in on the rabbit in the middle of the field, even the birds seemed to have stopped singing. He went for the throat with his razor sharp teeth. I would almost swear that the young rabbit died of heart failure, of pure fear, even before the actual physical killing took place before my eyes.
Nature at work in its most violent but strangely beautiful form. I must get off my fat arse and do some walks, maybe even do the Laxie mountain walk (who am I kidding!!).
