fields of stubble were ploughed; transformed within minutes to brown wastelands, churned-up battlefields of Somme-like proportions from the perspective of a hare. The earth was cut, broken up and turned over by a tractor dragging a plough, and then drilled and sowed with new seed. I pictured the hares fleeing the steel tractors, their hearts pounding in fear, only to return and find their forms—or their leverets—crushed beneath the vast oblivious treads, or later licking their back paws, unknowingly coating their tongues with chemicals, once the new crops were sprayed. The intensification of
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