AH, I thought as I ran, so many things I might have become. But – hopping back over a few yards of gravel to retrieve a slipper while looking for something more hurtful than bad language to hurl – I never thought I would turn into Elmer Fudd.
Elmer, you will recall, is the Looney Tunes cartoon hunter with a speech impediment determined to bag Bugs Bunny. His obsession, and mantra, is: "Kill the wabbit! Kill the wabbit!"
Take away the hunting outfit, the gun and the speech impediment, i
f not necessarily the short legs and furious temper, and I have become Elmer Fudd. All I need is the rabbit in our garden to stand on its back legs, chew a carrot and sneer "What's up, Doc?" to crack up completely.
It's not as if I've never seen a rabbit before, and that's the trouble. I've seen the damage they can do to crops and the desperate measures sometimes taken against them. Rabbit-catching could be a full-time job, ferreting, shooting and snaring full-time hobbies.
Changed days when rabbits are now one of Britain's most popular, pampered, overfed house pets. Watership Down has a lot to answer for.
Rabbit sightings are not unusual where we live now. They have been seen running about the grassy gap site opposite the house. Such is the nature of irony that I even enjoyed a five-minute tableau last autumn as a pheasant, cat and rabbit froze and eyed each other in a tight triangle until the cat finally strolled away.
If only I could do the same. Instead, if I catch a glimpse of fur while working in the garden I react. If I see it while glancing out of a window I drop books, break off conversations or risk a hernia by doing a jack-in-the-box impression and dashing out.
It's all so sudden because until a few months ago there was no evidence of rabbits on our side of the road. I put that down to being on a fox run from the riverside banking, down the length of our garden, and into shrubberies beyond. As well as eating windfall apples and leaving small, if evil-smelling, deposits, I trusted foxes passing through to catch rabbits.
Now they're neglecting their job and the furry little pest in our garden is never far from my mind, especially with vegetables to plant out or sow in the next couple of months.
If it is aggravating to have Bugs digging scuff-holes in the strawberry bed and eating an emerging patch of yellow crocuses – look, something ate the crocuses and if not the rabbit, what? – it is infuriating to be wakened by the security light in the small hours to find it contentedly nibbling on the back green.
There is also the near-certainty that the behaviour rabbits are noted for means that the problem is unlikely to remain singular. There may be more than one now. I've never got close enough to spot any differences, only to see a white tail disappearing.
As these vain chases and a twanging hamstring begin to remind me too much of my last season as a full-back, I accept that tactics must change. Cunning is needed, not attempts at brute force. And someone who is a better shot than I am.
The full article contains 569 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
