With nature and a camera

Chapter IV. Gamekeepers: their friends and foes

Snaring rabbits

Rabbits are killed by poachers in various ways, most of which are well known to everybody. The animal's habit of using a fixed path in journeying between its burrow and feeding ground renders it liable to being caught in a snare during the night; and although some poachers are punctilious in regard to the suitability of an evening for putting snares down, I have seen a Rabbit run leisurely into one in broad daylight.

I was walking quietly alongside a wood in the neighbourhood of Enfield one bright Sunday afternoon last year, when I observed three Rabbits run down the field I was in towards the hedge dividing it from a wood. When within eight or ten yards of their goal, I noticed one of them suddenly turn a somersault. I was somewhat surprised to see him stay and repeat this gymnastic performance after his companions had disappeared through the hedge. He continued to tumble head over heels until I got close up to him, when I discovered that he was in a snare. Although in very good condition both his ears were a black swarming mass of fleas.

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I do not think it is at all generally known that Rabbits will sometimes turn and bite their captors.

I was once severely bitten by one when a boy, and was greatly afraid I should die from hydrophobia in consequence, until I discovered by diligent inquiry that it was an accident which occasionally fell to the lot of gamekeepers and poachers.

Rabbits at play

I also learned something of a still rarer accident which sometimes befalls an unlucky Ferret. If one be turned into a burrow, and finding a Rabbit fails to bolt it, a second is generally sent along to help him. Instead, however, of exerting their combined efforts to accomplish this, they probably, through jealousy, fall upon each other and one of them is generally dug out dead.