Silent Friends

There are times when it is just lovely to spend times with friends, laughing, chatting, drinking wine. However, just recently I found a different friend.  She doesn’t know she is my friend and she certainly doesn’t care – but I know that I am hers.

Back in February I was weeding in the garden, trying to prepare the beds a little before the spring, and saw under a plant, what looked like matted fur.  Thinking that some poor animal had got into our garden and died there, I called Nigel over to take a look.  Nigel is a wildlife expert and, although more used to handing Red Kites and Goshawks, can be trusted to deal with anything furry, feathery, crawly or bitey.  He bent down, laughed, and straightened slowly with the scrap of fur in his hands.

‘Here,’ he said ‘you always wanted to raise one.  Now’s your chance.’ And he handed me a tiny leveret. 

There is no way into our garden for an animal.  Nigel checked the back of the leveret’s neck for puncture wounds and found none.  The mother was not in our garden – which has a animal-proof fence around it – and so how the little creature got into our garden is as mysterious as hares are.

Wrapping the hare in a towel and tucking it into a box, I began to Google.  A little later, and after a trip to a Tesco to buy kitten milk, the leveret was tucked up on my lap whilst I tried to persuade her to drink from a pipette.

It was extremely difficult as she was frightened but I persevered, not wanting to lose her.  Nigel had counselled that she probably would not survive and that  I was not to take it personally, but looking into that dark eye which stared back at me, how could I not?

In the morning I crept downstairs and peeped into the box.  A beady bright eye stared steadily back and I let out the breath I had been holding.

Later that morning, armed with more kitten milk and with a kitten-feeding bottle, I was ready and in for the long-haul.  Nigel had built the leveret a snug cage which was filled with fresh hay and mimicked a scrape that would have been her bed if she were in the wild, and it took pride of place in our sitting room.  However, this meant that the sitting-room (which doubles as a dining room) was now out of bounds for at least 50 days.

Apart from going in to feed her, I did not enter the sitting-room either.  We had to keep her as wild as could be to ensure she would survive, if she survived at all.

Those minutes where I fed her were something that I will never forget.  She would stare at me intently whilst noisily sucking away on a bottle and would keep eye contact with me.  You are supposed to talk to a leveret whilst you feed them so that they feel safe, and so I would sit with her on my lap, talking softly to her whilst she judged me most severely with her beautiful brown eyes.

She did survive and in April we released her.  She was completely wild and equipped to live her life and as she ran across the grass and then stopped under a tree and sat up in that typical hare pose, I felt as proud as any mother would be on their child’s first day at school.