WE HAVE BEEN FERRETING IN THE SNOW, which is the best time to go ferreting because you can tell from the paw marks which holes the rabbits are using. From a pest control angle this is quite a good time of year to get the rabbit numbers down before th
ey start serious breeding.
A rabbit's foot isn't just for any old luck; it's a fertility symbol. The ferret man, who mends my washing machine with such monotony that it would have been cheaper to buy a gold-plated Miele, had been asked to have a go at a warren in the edge of a wood next to a neighbour's field sown with winter barley.
The rabbits hadn't done much damage, at least nothing we could see – but then you never can until it's too late. But they would certainly hammer it early in the spring.
I am ferretless since we got rid of our last two, Pinky and Perky, because they weren't getting out enough, with only me at home. So they went back whence they came, to a ferret breeder who, like a lot of people involved in ferrets, lives in a former council house with a handkerchief-sized garden almost entirely full of ferret cages. He is also quite difficult to understand due to some unfortunate speech impediment interspliced with a very strong Fife accent, but very cheery. He is devoted to his ferrets and they to him, although they smell rather of supermarket cigarettes.
He said he had someone who would take Pinky and Perky as I hadn't really got the heart to take them out in the car and turn them loose near the first likely bit of rabbity-looking wood. Which is probably what he did anyway. Ferrets are two a penny. With the washing machine man, Phil, and his pal Peem, in full jungle green camouflage against the snow, we found the warren and lots of little footprints and pink patches of rabbit pee, at one end of a longish sandy hump that ran inside the edge of the wood under two Scots pines and the tangled remains of a pheasant pen. We spread ourselves out pretty well, or as well as three can spread themselves, and in went the albino ferret. You can actually hear (sometimes) rabbits crashing about; a sort of rumbling in the ground, once the ferret gets in. Bolting rabbits are worse than a flush of pheasants, but faster. They might as well have known I was coming because they erupted from the ground in high-speed pairs. The knack is to pick a target and go for it.
Whereas I still manage to pick a target and then spot what I imagine to be an easier one, switch my aim and miss both. So the rabbits on the top end of the warren had a lucky day. But in the end we still had 32 between us, which was good, but hardly going to make a huge dent in the local rabbit population.
It was cold and blue and offering more snow up on the coast as we called it a day, or rather a morning. There is not much to beat trudging through snow back to the jeep with a sackful of rabbits and the promise of damson gin and hot sausage rolls. The downside is gutting. I still find it the oddest thing that we all love bunnies and yet I have no compunction about shooting them. All a bit primal.
arobertson@scotsman.com
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