I could not bear to walk any further for fear of what else I might find.

What a destructive, cruel being man is, how many living beings and plants he annihilates to maintain his own life. —Leo Tolstoy, Hadji Murat, 1912

I decided I must try, and began to walk downstairs while calling gently to the mother hare. To my surprise, she ran straight towards me and pawed my leg. She followed me as I turned to where her leveret lay flat, its front paws splayed and chin resting helplessly on the step. She sniffed my hands as I bent down, scooped up the fallen leveret and

I busied myself with work and gave philosophical replies to anyone who asked about the hare, hiding my sadness at its disappearance, and feeling guilty for my absence.

But its winter pelt came on rapidly, including a generous ruff of fur below its throat that swelled like a mane as the weeks passed, and that it would sink its neck into while resting.

The intensification of agriculture has been described as the “superfactor” leading to the decline of the hare population. The dramatic increase in the frequency of the mowing of fields as a result of modern farming methods, the ripping out of hedges to create vast fields to increase crop yields and accommodate huge machinery, and the rise in

it had a pharmacy label indicating that it was intended for “PATIENT: HARE,” listing my address and my name as the animal’s “OWNER.” I smiled, since nothing could be further from the truth. The leveret defied ownership, belonging only to itself.

He asked me to bring it into the surgery as he ought to X-ray the leg. I feared that the experience, if not fatal, might shatter its trust in me. The leveret had never been put in a sealed box or transported, and I imagined its sensitive heart pounding away in such a confined space until it gave out.

I arranged the removal of the sofa one morning, leaving behind a void in the sitting room, adjacent to the fireplace where the leveret fed. It refused to enter the house for several days in apparent protest at the reordering of its landscape.