Raising Hare: A Memoir

by Chloe Dalton

One leveret was visibly larger and more daring than the others. One day, it wandered inside the house, only for the hare to chase it out, back towards its hiding place. The smaller two were always together, and one had an ear that seemed to never stand fully upright. On hot days, they drank copious amounts of water from a dish I put out for them. Their routines were identical to their mother’s, laying to rest any lingering thought I’d had

that her own behaviour as a leveret had been altered by her contact with me. In the morning, they rested, sunbathed and played. They discovered their mother’s dust bath and darted in and out of it. At other times, when the leverets were in hiding, passing pheasants would fluff up t...

The leverets patrolled the wall as their mother once did, the instinct to jump up appearing even before their legs had the power to execute the leap. But the day was not far off, and eventually, they succeeded. The bold one went first; the others followed after a few days. That night not only did they return, but they ca...

described as solitary, but I watched as over the following weeks the hare and her leverets returned over the wall each day. Long after they were weaned they appeared to retain a link with each other, contrary to most accounts of hares’

Eventually, the mother hare’s leverets melted into the landscape and stopped returning. If they lingered nearby, I could not tell, since there was no sure way of identifying them at a distance, even if at times I thought I recognised one or the other of them from a familiar stance or a certain cock of the ear.

male hares in particular are believed to disperse from their place of birth as they reach sexual maturity, a biological urge designed to improve their reproductive prospects. I was unlikely ever to see them again.

Still, I was sad to see them go, but it felt as if the circle had been completed, and I was pleased that her offspring were fully wild. It was an experience I had never thought to witness, and it seemed magical that she had chosen to raise her litter in my garden.

But I knew now

she knew everything necessary for her own care, survival and indeed reproduction. She needed nothing from me other than that I do her no harm, which might serve as a motto for all wild animals. All she required was a little space, a patch of sun in which to lie, and peace. This realisation made her continued presence in the garden and the house all the more precious, since it was by choice.

While her leverets had gone, the hare remaine...

We filled our hats and pockets with the dark fruit and,

The fruit was abundant, I realised, because the farmer who worked that particular field allowed that section of hedge to grow undisturbed.

The concentration of hares was particularly dense around that length of hedgerow, where there was also a band of set-aside land. Both offered cover to the hares as well as producing the profuse crop from which we had foraged.

By contrast, most of the hedges in the vicinity were cut several times a year in order to prevent them from shading crops in the fields or obscuring the road to drivers. The very reason why farmers might wish to cut back hedges—because crops str...

mechanised farming means that this hedge-cutting is done with a tractor fitted with a battery of flail blades spinning at high speed. It shreds a hedge in seconds, razing it to a uniform height marked by thousands of splintered ends, as if the branches had exploded rather than been cut. The result of such treatment is a weakened and barren hedge, riven with gaps stripped of the berries, nuts and hips that help sustain birds during the winter, and with less of the deep tangled shelter favoured by wildlife.

practice of ploughing the field right up to the very edge, to make the most of every inch of land. This has the effect of removing the uncultivated grass or wildflower corridors which hares use

With the agreement of the owners of the neighbouring land, that summer I extended the hedge beyond my house, planting nearly a thousand new saplings—known as “whips”—in

mix of native trees, chosen for their suitability for local conditions, including hawthorn, blackthorn, field maple, oak, hazel and dog rose.

sapling was wrapped in a transparent tree guard to protect it against the teeth of rabbits—or hares—but all else was left to nature. In ten years’ time, the hedge would be “laid” by hand, with each ste...

so it can be bent over and fastened to the ground, creating a horizontal structure from which a mass of new thick side shoots grows, thickening over time into a natural windbreak, a home for dormice, hedgehogs and insects; a dank haven for mushro...

Every six yards or so we planted a taller specimen that, unlike the rest of the hedge, would be left to grow over ...

in the battered existing hedgero...

oak and spindle and maple, relishing making these incremental improvements to the habitat that, were it not for the hare, woul...

existence of a deep shallow declivity...

We scraped out the accumulated silt with a digger, restoring the pond and adding a pile of stone and logs at the water’s edge as a refuge for newts. The

cavity that first looked muddy and forlorn slowly began to fill, and within no time brimmed with wind-ruffled water, its banks studded with purple cornflowers, drawing deer and other wildlife.

lavender plants beneath the fruit trees to attract bees, and

my imagination collided with the reality of the dense clay soil, which caused persistent waterlogging and killed off some plants within weeks. Two

unexpected benefit, however, in providing a new form of shelter for the hare.

my ignorance

nettles beyond the wall—which

were essential to the red admiral, peacock and painted lad...

laid their eggs upon the leaves, so that their caterpillars ...

long grass...

provided shelter for the leverets now became a magnet for goldfinches,

decided to leave it uncut altogether, noticing that the clover and dandelions that would normally be razed by the mower were rich food for

the hare, and that she could also eat thistles without apparent discomfort.

The hare was now approaching her second winter. She still came to the door most days without fail. Her link with me and with the house did not seem to be fading. On the few occasions I was late opening the door for he...

I knew I could not guarantee being at the house in time for her dawn or afternoon arrivals. I ...

The carpenter I had consulted before agreed to return again, and this time he threw himself into solving the problem. He

fashioned a perfect, hare-sized door, set into the main pane of glass, complete with bolts, hinges, and weatherboard to keep out the rain. It was soon to prove its value in a way that I could never have foreseen.

Ultimate Trust

The hare is deeply devoted to its offspring and dreads both the designs of huntsmen and the attacks of foxes; and it has no less a horror of the attacks of birds, and even more so of the cry of ravens and of eagles. For there is no treaty of peace between these birds and it.

with the hare. I looked at her as she sat nearby, licking her muzzle and inspecting her front paws, a picture of calm unconcern. The gnawed edges of the copper wiring were needle-sharp beneath my fingertips. What harm will it have done to her gums? I thought. My gaze wandered across the room and settled upon the opposite wall. I sighed. She had snipped through the TV cable as well.

She had resumed spending time upstairs in my bedroom in the mornings, which she had not done since she was a leveret. Severing dangling cables seemed in keeping with her peculiar mood.

found her with her nose pressed up against the glass door in the sitting room, waiting to be let in. I

straight as ever, with no perceptible bulge or misalignment. Holding my breath, I pulled it a few inches away from the wall, and looked behind it. There, pressed closely together, with dark chocolate fur and bottomless, coal-black eyes, were a pair of leverets. They lay with their muzzles to the wall, their ears squeezed tightly

with a friend, I had commented that even if we were to pass within inches of a leveret curled up in its form, it would be unlikely to move and reveal itself. I would probably never see a newborn leveret again in my lifetime, I said. Now, there was a pair in my house.

This time, she had chosen to give birth in the house, behind the chair I sat in every day to work.

doe hare has on average eight leverets a year. This rate of fertility continues until a female hare is between four and six years old, if she lives that long. I was now aware of the hare having had two