Rewilding Europe
Return of Ferocious Carnivores
By way of an entr’acte, here is a brief response to a recent intemperate comment about the dog Caesar who features, perhaps more than he should, in those tormented covid diaries.
Although he delights in chasing deer, rabbits, hare, pheasants, even lizards, to my certain knowledge Caesar has never caught one, not even come close. Apart from the lizards, that is, but they have their own ways of escape. Neither has Caesar ever shown the slightest inclination to capture a boar, thank God. So a very definite “no!” to the misplaced notion that he returns each evening with the bloody remains of his latest kill in tow. He prefers croquettes.
He is, however, a dog, and certain scents are of ancestral significance to him. You may not like Virginia Woolf (I’m not all that keen myself), but her evocation of this in the dog Flush - “Span ! Span !” - cannot be bettered. If you have not read that yet, I envy you. I would even go so far as to recommend it to Mr Monbiot.
However, Caesar did once encounter a deer at close quarters and it is a story worth telling.
We were getting ready to go to an organ recital one Sunday evening long ago. A Mendelsohn sonata was on the menu – the one with a chromatic run in the pedals that always brings envious twitches to my own clumsy organist’s legs. And one of the Bach trios that only angels can play. This tasty prospect had rather allowed us to ignore a chorus of weird noises coming from the garden, until they eventually brought us to the window to look. There was a dog. Our dog, although that seemed hard to believe. It was engaged in an insane high velocity circular dance round and round an embryonic tree, still clad in its wire netting to protect it against the deer. Then we saw – there was indeed a deer. A very tiny one; in fact, not even Mr Disney could have invented a tinier. A fawn, with nothing to its credit but very fetching ears had got itself trapped inside the enclosure.
And so it came to pass that our startled neighbours on their way to the concert averted their eyes (or not, as the case may be) at the sight of two elderly academics, both stark naked, one with a furled umbrella, apparently engaged in some kind of pagan maypole ritual with an attendant dog. And it wasn’t short lived either, that ritual – it took the best part of half an hour to extract the fawn, its mother silently standing all that time at the other end of the wood hoping to provoke the dog. And what of this fearsome predator? You may well ask. Once we had taken over, Caesar simply settled down to enjoy the show, a little apart in the upper circle seats.
Finally released, instead of fleeing, the fawn lay down on its back, raised a feeble pair of legs, and waited until Caesar came to lick its ears. That done, mother and baby, reunited at last, finally fled to the far woods to live another day. We didn’t fancy making an entrance to the concert, albeit fully clad, convincing ourselves we would have been too late.
Rewilding Europe
Return of Ferocious Carnivores
By way of an entr’acte, here is a brief response to a recent intemperate comment about the dog Caesar who features, perhaps more than he should, in those tormented covid diaries.
Although he delights in chasing deer, rabbits, hare, pheasants, even lizards, to my certain knowledge Caesar has never caught one, not even come close. Apart from the lizards, that is, but they have their own ways of escape. Neither has Caesar ever shown the slightest inclination to capture a boar, thank God. So a very definite “no!” to the misplaced notion that he returns each evening with the bloody remains of his latest kill in tow. He prefers croquettes.
He is, however, a dog, and certain scents are of ancestral significance to him. You may not like Virginia Woolf (I’m not all that keen myself), but her evocation of this in the dog Flush - “Span ! Span !” - cannot be bettered. If you have not read that yet, I envy you. I would even go so far as to recommend it to Mr Monbiot.
However, Caesar did once encounter a deer at close quarters and it is a story worth telling.
We were getting ready to go to an organ recital one Sunday evening long ago. A Mendelsohn sonata was on the menu – the one with a chromatic run in the pedals that always brings envious twitches to my own clumsy organist’s legs. And one of the Bach trios that only angels can play. This tasty prospect had rather allowed us to ignore a chorus of weird noises coming from the garden, until they eventually brought us to the window to look. There was a dog. Our dog, although that seemed hard to believe. It was engaged in an insane high velocity circular dance round and round an embryonic tree, still clad in its wire netting to protect it against the deer. Then we saw – there was indeed a deer. A very tiny one; in fact, not even Mr Disney could have invented a tinier. A fawn, with nothing to its credit but very fetching ears had got itself trapped inside the enclosure.
And so it came to pass that our startled neighbours on their way to the concert averted their eyes (or not, as the case may be) at the sight of two elderly academics, both stark naked, one with a furled umbrella, apparently engaged in some kind of pagan maypole ritual with an attendant dog. And it wasn’t short lived either, that ritual – it took the best part of half an hour to extract the fawn, its mother silently standing all that time at the other end of the wood hoping to provoke the dog. And what of this fearsome predator? You may well ask. Once we had taken over, Caesar simply settled down to enjoy the show, a little apart in the upper circle seats.
Finally released, instead of fleeing, the fawn lay down on its back, raised a feeble pair of legs, and waited until Caesar came to lick its ears. That done, mother and baby, reunited at last, finally fled to the far woods to live another day. We didn’t fancy making an entrance to the concert, albeit fully clad, convincing ourselves we would have been too late.