Hunting with Eeyore

I've got a chum coming to visit me tomorrow. I've been telling this friend about hunting rabbits and I felt duty-bound to at least attempt to get a rabbit to put before them tomorrow for dinner. So I was sitting around this evening - pooped, after a day spent bringing my flat up to the hygienic levels that, in a dim light, might just pass muster as civilised - thinking, Well, I'd like to just sit around on my bum now, drink wine and snort snuff, but - oh, gawd - I'd better get out there and try and get a rabbit.

So I walked to the fields thinking, what I really want to happen is that I'll just get there, bag a rabbit immediately and then I can go straight damn home again. My perennial, Eeyore-like gloom supplied the coda: Oh, fat chance of that...

I got to the old orchard and tiptoed up to the tree where I sit; peeking round it, what did I see but a rabbit! Extraordinary! I levelled the rifle and gingerly nudged round the tree until I had it in the sights - and fired. It jumped up and fell down: I'd got it! I was about to get up and retrieve it when I noticed that - right next to it - there was another rabbit. (I tend to avoid - if I can - anthropomorphising rabbit behaviour on this blog; that kind of thing strikes me, very often, as being in bad taste. This time, however - bad taste or not - I'd struggle to find a better way of describing the attitude of the second rabbit other than to say that it was regarding its suddenly fallen comrade with a cautious perplexity.) I ducked back behind the tree, reloaded, stuck my head back round, sighted, and fired. It jumped up and fell down. Two! I'd got two rabbits in the space of as many minutes!

I walked home along the busy road that leads to my flat, watching the cars go by and gaining an embarrassingly large amount of enjoyment from being seen to be carrying a rabbit in each hand.

I'd read an article about the 'Thatcher Years' earlier that had referenced Bowie's Ashes to Ashes as being the soundtrack to that florid era in British history. As I walked home, then, it returned to me and I found myself singing out loud:

"Do you remember a guy that's been,
In such an early song,
I've heard a rumour from Ground Control,
Oh no, don't say it's true,
They got a message from the Action Man,
I'm happy, hope you're happy too..."

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Tags: hunting, psychology, rabbits, shooting